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Amersham is about 30 miles north west of London, and is right in the “Stock Brokers Belt”, easy access to either Luton or Heathrow, and the main motorways, combined with beautiful English Countryside make this a favourite place for the wealthy. It was here that we spent our last two nights in the U.K before boarding the ferry to France.
My cousin Will, and his Californian wife Lia have recently moved here from the States and are in the process of renovating a huge ,three storey brick house.
We spent two great days there, meeting their lovely children and enjoying their great hospitality.
Will took Liam and Vanessa for a spin in his Aston Martin, which I think will be one of their highlights for our trip.
On the sunday morning we left early for Canterbury to meet with the very generous lady who has allowed us to stay in their Paris flat for the next week.
Canterbury, just north of Dover is a beautiful, historic , walled town, that dates back to Roman times, and as we were early getting there ,we spent the morning wandering the streets and taking in the sights.
From here it was an easy half hour drive down to Dover and on to our boat. The Ferries look to be suffering from the down turn as the boat was only quarter full.
It didnt take much adjusting to driving on the right as we were straight on to the Motorway south to Paris.
But as most of the main motorways are toll roads in France , we detoured off to save money, and also to tour some of the world War 1 battlefields and monuments around Arras.
As we drove into Paris, the difference in driving cultures became very obvious. As soon as we got off the motorway, it became a free for all, with cars attacking your lane from every side and you had to get aggressive or be run off the road. Luckily I enjoy a competition, and after a bit of initial swearing , I got the hang of it and started to enjoy it. Even the pedestrians got in on the act, by waiting till the lights went green and then walking straight out into the traffic.
After a couple of wrong turns , Jen managed to navigate us right to the parking building where we wanted to leave our car , and a dodgy looking “Philipino” bloke took our 60 euros and promised to look after Vladimir for a week.
Carting all our gear on our backs, we navigated across town on the Metro to our home for the next 10 days, a beautiful apartment in the Montparnasse area.
Already we have noticed , that travelling on the Metro is much more expensive in Paris than London, but most of the other costs appear similar. Fuel is the same price at around 1 euro or 1 pound per litre and the other essentials beer and wine are very similar.
The other thing that is much cheaper over here is telecom services, you can get Sky TV plus Broadband plus phone line rental plus free tolls for 20 Euros/month.
Staying in central Paris is very expensive, the Hotel across the road here, is just ordinary, but a suite for 4 people would cost $1000 NZD per night !!!!
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