Bon Jour Mon Ami,

What a trip! Beautiful city, beautiful hotel, beautiful people. Jan and I walked our legs off for 4 days, ate and drank well. It's hard to know where to start.

It started spitting snow in the taxi from the airport, was overcast, as you can tell by the pictures, the entire time. It snowed on our last day there, as we stood in line waiting to get into the Louve.

We were afraid that because of the cold and weather we wouldn't be able to eat alfresco. Leave it to the French, every resturant was open outside for dinner, coffee, whatever.

Our first trip to the Louve on Wed had about a 4 hour line, we decided to come back on Fri, our last day there. There was also a 4 hour line to buy a ticket to stand in line for another 2 hours to go up to the top of the Eiffel Tower in the fog.

Jan wanted to go into The House of Louis Vitton on the Champs Elysees but there was a line outside waiting just to get into it.

The Champs Elysees is 6 lanes wide, the side walks on either side are almost as wide. During New Years Eve they closed it to traffic. They expected 2 million people, we lost count at 1.2 million. We crammed (literally, they used a shoe horn to press us in) into a subway to go to the Tracadara, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. The mayor had outlawed fireworks in the city so their was a light show there. We walked back to the Arc de Triomphe (about 2 kilometers) and then to our hotel through all the revelers.

Other than taxis we traveled by double decker tour bus. You can see Jan being a brave trooper up on top freezing. Please notice her coat. She had it tailored in Kuwait before we left, cashmere.

Hope you enjoy the pictures

Au revoir