Yesterday (Tuesday) we ventured from Venice to Paris via Milan. During this trip of 12 hours we briefly took in the sights of Milans historic stataion bulit by Mussilini and the incredible scenery of the snow capped alps. On the entry into France there was a long delay caused by the removal of some illegal immigrants from the train.
Finally, with not much sleep and plenty of card gamzs we arrived in Paris at the Gare de Lyon where we were bused to our hotel and to our beds at about 1."à am.
After a good but short nights sleep, we were up early ready for our first look at Paris. Our guide was Evelyn. We caught the metro to Musee d Orsay were we saw works by Monet, Manet, Degas, Van Gogh, and Evelyn explained the historical development of their style of painting.
After an hours tour, we moved onto the Eiffel Tower where the queues were very long.This did not lessen our spirit. We caught the lift to the highest level where we experienced amazing views across Paris. We descended by the stairs- the whole 700 plus of them. We crossed the Seine River and made our way to the Arc de Triumphe, a magnificent monument built in 1836 to celebrate Napoleons victory at Austerlitz.
The traffic in Paris is generally not as chaotic as we saw in Rome and Naples. The roads around the arc are chocked with traffic seemlyingly not following any rules. After lunch we were keen to do some washing so we made our way back to the hotel and used a local laundry. Dinner was at a lovely restaurant, Cafe Barjot. We had a lot to share at the nightly D&M after these 2 full and exciting days.
Love Hayley, Nick B and Dylan
