Bali Bound

Well, the pictures are almost done.  I'm still amazed of how many pictures I took.  That's the good and bad thing with the digital camera.  Now the challenge is to weed through them to see which ones to get for me! The view of the Eiffel tower from our hotel room.  Seriously, I had a good laugh The Louvre Museum in the morning without the swarms of people Random interesting bits from the Louvre, they had a lot to look at The crowds waiting to see the Mona Lisa, it was crazy busy.  Then I read an article today about Paris and there are people lined up right before the museum opens and they all run to have some quiet time with the painting.  We didn't care enough to wait in the line! The never ending corridor of paintings A lovely view of the river Seine A fine example of some Parisian architecture with all the wrought iron, and of course, the McDonalds! The closed Catacombs, am still disappointed The green gate i...

This will be a quick update. I had to laugh because they always say in the movies that in Paris you can see the Eiffel tower from any room and people carry baguettes in their grocery bags. Well,if you look out the window here we can see the entire tower! I guess the road we are staying on goes right there, or at least looks like it does. It gave me a good laugh!

Today we had our day to ourselves. Mostly. The planned excursion was to the louvre museum. We were planning on going but didn't want to pay the 45€ to go when it only cost us 10€ each instead. We did end up taking a ride with the group and then ditched them and went in alone. Also, I'm not sure that I am that into art and statues to want to follow someone around for almost three hours telling me what to think. That museum is insanely huge. I knew it was big but wow. We toured a little bit of it. The Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo were easy to find. The Mona Lisa is fairly small and there were swarms of people fighting to get in line to see it up close. Paris is an interesting place to visit. I really wouldn't want to drive here. It looks like it is complete chaos. Our replacement driver spent a lot of time honking at other drivers. It's also very frightening to cross the street. We've had a few close calls. And that is with following the lights! The...

This is the point of the trip that I'd like to say I've used my little bit of French, but I haven't. Most people speak far better English, and my French is really limited. I did have to laugh that our tour guide thinks that French is the hardest language. And it is the one I feel most comfortable with! Today was mostly a busy travel day. We left Montreux for Lausanne so we could catch the high speed train to Paris. Wow, first class train travel is fancy. We had a little breakfast meal served to us. It was like being on the plane but far more comfortable. I did have to laugh when someone asked before we got on and out tour director told them that "of course we are traveling first class'. And even traveling speeds up to 280 km an hour it was still a four hour ride. But a comfortable four hours. But we arrived safely and started our city tour. That is the one part of this package that is a little lackluster. The city tours. It mostly consists of us ...