Friday Got up really early and after breakfast finished packing and off to catch 3 trains (2 x Metro and 1 x long distance train) to Joingy to pick up our boat. We arrived well early and after a necessary coffee walked the 1 km with all of our baggage to the boat depot. Left our baggage there and after a bit of a hassle found a supermarket. Did a big shop and then thought ‘how the heck are we going to get this back to the boat’ Managed to get a taxi and ...

Thursday Paris Our last full day in Paris. We all decided to have an ‘easy’ day today. While we were watching the Tour de France the other day, the cyclists travelled through a leafy town South of Paris with an enormous Chateau. This looked so interesting that we unanimously decided to go there today. Good decision. We got off the Metro right at the end of the line and on reaching the surface were faced with the stunning entrance tower to the Chateau....

Wednesday - Monet's garden tripGot up fairly early and were out by 8.45 to catch the Metro to St. Lazzar and then on to the meeting place for the Fat Tire bike trip to Giverny. We were early so went and booked for our train tickets from Paris to Joigny on Friday. Not particularly easy but after 3 different information counters, got the right one. 66.74 E for 4 seniors - about a 90 minute trip.Anyway, after quite a wait our tour leader arrived to escort us on to t...

Tuesday Paris Got up early this morning as on a mission to get to Notre Dame before the crowds. Two changes of Metro and were there by 9 am. No queue so we were able to see the first 30 min without too many tourists. Notre Dame is really amazing, built in the 13th century it has been famous over the centuries for sacred music and worship. The stained glass windows were fantastic, particularly the Rose windows. By the time we had walked around for an hour o...

Monday in Paris Ok, this was going to be a fairly easy going day, hop on hop off bus with not much walking. Yeah right!!! We started off under Jan’s expert Metro guidance and ended up changing trains 3 times before we got to the place we thought we wanted to go!! Kevin had the bookings for the 2 day hop on bus, but we couldn’t find a b us stop right off, and ended up walking around Notre Dame 3 times. Finally jumped on and settle down for the green tour,...