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Paris
Our Palace of Versailles tour guide directs us to good, local, low-cost restaurants. His main instruction; get off the main streets, by about five blocks. His plan works, we find a street lined with restaurants, the hard part is choosing what we want to eat. We finally pick one and enjoy our meal starting with a great French Onion Soup. Satisfied, we walk back to the Eiffel Tower. Being a Sunday, we
encounter long lines to get to the tower.
We visit with another couple in line finding out this line gets us into
the park, then we have to get into another line to get onto the tower itself. We decide to take our hop-on hop-off bus tour
instead. The tour does what we need it
to do. We find the locations of the Louvre,
Notre Dame, Arc de Triumph, along with the Eiffel Tower. The route takes over two hours to
complete. A boat tour is included with
the bus ticket so we see Paris from a different perspective. A long walk home leaves us exhausted, we
sleep well this night. |
| Mushrooms anyone? |
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| Base of the Louvre |
We wake at 645 for our 1045 Louvre tour. A bus gets us there in 20 minutes. We meet our guide and the other 22 tourists
in our group. We learn from our guide that
the Louvre workers are on strike today. She
also informs us this seems to occur monthly; we just happened to pick the right
day. We get in line hoping the museum
will open, soon. 1045 passes, we are
still waiting. We meet a couple from New
Hampshire learning their story and they learning ours. Finally at 1120 the strike ends. A loud cheer goes up from the patient
tourists still waiting for the museum to open.
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| Winged Victory |
Our group of 24 has dwindled to 11.
Our guide has gone through this before.
She announces we will see all the major pieces, but we will get an
abbreviated story of the museum. Our
tour goes from 2 hours to 1:40. We see the base of the Louvre, Venus de Milo,
Winged Victory, a few other various paintings along with descriptions of the
different painting styles.
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Mona Lisa
from the back of the pack |
Finally, we see – from a distance – over a crowd of
people – a large crowd of people - the Mona Lisa. In my mind it is somewhat of a letdown. We have been touring and learning of many different
paintings, many of them large, larger than we could hang in our house. The Mona Lisa is 21” x 30”. The story about how the painting became so
famous is jaw dropping. The story that made the Mona Lisa famous
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| The front of the pack |
 |
| Notre Dame |
I was not able to get timed entry tickets to Notre Dame so
we try our luck as walk ins. Notre Dame
has only been open since December of 2024, from the 2019 fire. There are seven
switchbacks in the line before getting to the main entrance. It takes less than 15 minutes to go through
the line, before entering the cathedral.
The outer area of the Cathedral, where visitors can tour, is
packed. People are talking so much that
recorded messages saying to keep quiet in English, French and Spanish repeat
every few minutes. Parishioners sit in the main portion of the church listening to
the priest chant in Latin. Stained glass surrounds us as we tour through
the church. One thing that does surprise
me is the selling of Notre Dame tourist items inside the church.
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| Arc de Triomphe |
Today we sleep in, until 730. Our search for Eiffel Tower tickets is
successful. We will be able to go all
the way to the top of the tower just as sunset occurs. Today, we are touring on foot. The real reason we are touring by foot is; I left the ticket for our hop-on hop-off bus
in my shirt pocket while doing laundry last night. We work to put the pieces together but reality sets in thinking if the driver will accept it. We decide on the healthy walk. We catch a city bus to the Plaza de Concorde
seeing many fountains and art exhibits.
This is the starting place for our walk up the Champs-Elysees to the Arc
de Triomphe.  |
| People in the lower left |
On the way, we pick up
postcards, bound for the US. We find a
post office only a block off our walk so they are on their way before the day
is done. The scale of the Arc de
Triomphe is imposing. We take our time
studying the sculptures on each of the four sides. One gets an idea of the size looking at the image on the right. The small dark spots on the bottom left are people.
From there we assemble a picnic lunch with
salad, bread, a wrap and macaron taking it to the River Seine, with the Eiffel Tower in the background.With time to spare we walk to one of the iconic spots to
photograph the Eiffel Tower, along with several hundred other tourists with the
same idea. We conduct some last-minute
souvenir shopping, being careful to purchase small items as we have been
traveling for the past four weeks with a total of two carry-ons.
 |
Paris view from
the top of the
Eiffel Tower |
We meet for our Eiffel Tower tour walking two blocks to the
same entrance we were trying to get into the day before. We walk right in, then go through metal
detectors. We quickly pass through to
the base of the Eiffel Tower, where we encounter yet another metal detector
before taking an elevator to the towers' lower level.
We learn that it took $1.5M to build the tower (1889 dollars) and in one
year Gustav Eiffel made enough money to pay it off and make a profit, from
ticket sales to 2M visitors that came to see it in 1889 World’s Fair. From the lower level we are able to see Notre
Dame, and the Seine River. We take the
next elevator to the summit getting a bird’s eye view of Paris, just after
sunset.
Ride to the top
 |
Underside of the
Eiffel Tower |
This evening the tower is bathed
in pick lights, for breast cancer awareness.
In addition, for five minutes after each hour the tower flashes with
tinkling bulbs covering the tower. We
are in the middle of it. Each time the
flashing starts we hear the crowd from far below, cheering, at the spectacle. Touring finished, we head down to level one,
then back to the ground to find a taxi to take us to our apartment. It is the start of Fashion Week, we are not
certain what that is, but it involves lots of pandemonium as we work our way through the crowd
to the taxi stand. Our taxi driver
mumbles about it, as we are surrounded by the multitude of people for the first
few miles we ride towards our apartment.
Tomorrow we are heading to London, by train.
London
 |
| Remember these? |
We are up early. We anticipate bureaucracy leaving the EU heading
into the UK. Our Uber driver is a
multitasker, talking on the phone the entire time we are riding to the train
station. Passing through immigration is
easy. Now we wait for the train, which
arrives 20 minutes late. So much for the
on-time efficiency of the trains. We
enjoy the wide, green landscape as we ride through France. Suddenly we are surrounded by fences, then our
world goes dark, for the next 30 miles, 35 minutes, traveling beneath the
English Channel.
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| A necessary reminder |
Another of Nicida’s friend’s, living outside of London,
meets us at the St Pancreas train station then shows us the way to the
Underground giving us a lesson on how to read the maps so we can negotiate the
Underground on our own. We take three
different trains to get to the stop for our hotel.
I have to mention that London is the first place in all our
travels where gentlemen offered to carry Nicida’s bag up the steps, waiting for
us at the top of the stairs. This
happened not once, but twice.
Once settled in our room, we take off again using the
Underground to take us near St Martin in the Fields. The church is closed for touring. We head off for lunch, followed by a walk
towards Westminster Abbey, the Elizabeth Tower which houses Big Ben, the giant
bell. We spot the London Eye, the huge
Ferris wheel across the Thames River. As
evening approaches, we take the Underground to our hotel stop, but first do our
usual grocery shopping for snacks, fruits and vegetables.
Hear Big Ben
Stonehenge
We are up early, preparing for our tour of Stonehenge. We take the Underground to our meeting
point. There we meet Nolh, our driver
and tour guide. There are 14 of us this
day-long tour. We start with Stonehenge,
on the Bath then a secret place, which I cannot give out any more information
about. We get to know each other with
each of us telling our story; where we are from, why we are here… Nolh is very engaging keeping us entertained
with questions for each of us and filling us with information about where we
are going.Stonehenge is about two an hour drive from London. Tourists follow a path around Stonehenge, no
more wandering in and among the monoliths.
A recorded audio guide is included and well worth the time to listen to. This area is quite open, and flat, all around
us we can see off in the distance. A
highway passes by the site a few hundred yards from the grounds.
Stonehenge is a prehistoric temple. It was built between 3000 and 2200 BC, by the
late neolithic people of Britain. It
consists of an outer ring of stones and an inner ‘horseshoe’ arrangement of
stones. There are two types of stones;
Sarsens, the large, hard stones up to 30 tons in weight, brought 15 miles from
the north. A large Sarsen stone, called
the Heelstone, sets outside of Stonehenge aligning with the summer solstice at
sunrise.
Smaller stones, bluestones, are generally volcanic, weighing
up to 5 tons. They were transported from
Wales, 150 miles to the southwest of Stonehenge.
Grass covered mounds surround the temple, along a ridgeline. These date from 2200 – 1600 BC. To date over 300 of these burial mounds have
been identified. Each covers the graves
of what are assumed to be prominent people.
Some cover burial sites others cover cremation sites. Items from that time are often found in the
sites; stone, bone and bronze tools, pottery, and ornaments made of exotic
materials.
In all, we spend a couple hours here, enough to wet our
appetite. Research is still going on to
understand all the different aspects of Stonehenge, a UNESCO World Heritage
Site.
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| Bath |
We leave for Bath.
The landscape changes from open fields to forest covered hills and
valleys. This area is known for its
natural hot springs. As Nolh points out,
‘The area was discovered by the Celts, developed by the Romans and built up by
the Georgians.’ This is yet another
UNESCO World Heritage Site.
 |
| Bath |
The last site is a wonderful place. Cozy and unfound, which is the way each of us
wants it to stay. You will have to find
your own secret place.
We arrive back at our hotel around 830, 12+ hours after we
started. It was a great small group tour,
highly suggested.
London
Today’s forecast is for rain. The British Museum moves to
the top of our list. We see a small
portion of the museum stating with Egypt, Nubia, Assyria, then Europe. I notice that the European exhibit is the
first to display weapons of war used around 1300 AD. The final exhibit I want to see is of North
America. First mention of inhabitants of
NA is back around 40,000 years through 12,000 years with the Ice Age. Other exhibits show clothes, tools, pottery,
rugs of current indigenous people.
We have tickets to see the play Hamilton – a musical, at the
Victoria Theater. We have no idea what
to expect, but enjoy what we see, hear and experience. It has a rap narrative so one has to pay
attention to the words because they go by very quickly.  |
| A chimney for every fireplace |
 |
| Buckingham Palace |
Today we take the blue route hop-on hop-off tour bus. 47 stops over 2 – 3 hours, traffic
dependent. The wind is cold and
blustery. Hopping off we find a
restaurant for a hot lunch. By the time
we are ready to go on the weather has improved, our next stop is the Tower
Bridge. We walk along the Thames up and downstream
from the bridge looking for good photo ops.
We see the bridge raising for a boat passage. Back on the bus, we pass Buckingham Palace,
our planned stop for tomorrow. The bus comes to a stop with the driver
disappearing. After five minutes of
waiting another driver boards the bus informing us this is the last stop. If we want to go on, we have to move to the
bus in front of us. We look at each
other in amazement at what just happened.
The next bus actually takes us to the stop we exit for our hotel, Marble
Arch, so it actually works in our favor.
 |
Queen Victoria
Memorial |
Today is our last full day in London. We do a bit of last-minute souvenir shopping;
we have just enough space in our carry-ons to pick up a small item for Nicida’s
granddaughter. We follow with breakfast
so we are ready for our hike through Hyde Park, only a few blocks from our
hotel. We stop at the Princess Diana Fountain. We continue our hike through Hyde Park,
through Wellington Arch, and on to Buckingham Palace. The crowd grows every step we take to the
Palace. We miss the changing of the
guard, but the palace is spectacular by itself.
We meet Nicida’s friend for a boat tour of the Thames.
 |
| Tower Bridge |
The Tower Bridge is the last point of the tour;
we take the opportunity to see the Tower Bridge from a different
viewpoint. Once back on land we lunch at
a British pub. It is not quite what I
expect from watching PBS shows and British pubs, it is way louder, with canned
music, and televisions showing sports. I
guess we will have to find a small-town, local pub he next time we come to
London. The food is good; the portions
are huge. We enjoy our
Cauliflower/Broccoli; ½ chicken with carrots, potatoes and Yorkshire pudding;
and Beef & Ale pie with mashed potatoes.
Tomorrow we depart for home, on day 39 of our trip.
Back home
Everything went well on our return flights, and our ride
back home.
It has taken me quite some time to write and post this
blog. My journal came to the rescue
again filling in details I just don’t remember or if I do, I get the details in the
correct order. Looking back, I am amazed
we were able to do the 39 days, visiting nine different cities, taking eleven
different trains, three flights, numerous taxis, busses, boats, and
subways. We had a wonderful time. Some places we would come back to, others
not. We discovered again, that we enjoy
getting outdoors much more than the big city, but some things we cannot see
unless we go to the big city. I included an image of our luggage for the past 39 days.
 |
| Our luggage |
I hope this blog will inspire those of you that enjoy
traveling. This is not an all-inclusive
report. It is what we did, and like to
go and see. It can be a start for
your own adventure. For those of you
that cannot travel, I hope you enjoyed my story.
Thank you for stopping by,
Mark
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