Paris

This photo shows the traffic on Paris freeways at 9pm. It never changed. Paul did a fine job getting us around in an unfamiliar city. The roads- no problem. The parking garages on the other hand...a different story. The hotel parking garage door didn't open when Paul was trying to exit. Another car had pulled up behind him, so Paul set the parking brake and got out to swipe his card at the scanner to open the doors. The brake failed and the car rolled and Paul tried to jump in and stop the car, and Paul fell, and the car hit the other car. Minor damage - no one badly injured (Paul scraped his ankle pretty bad when he fell), but we get to spend the next couple of hours sorting out an accident. Laurent, the owner of the car we hit, was very decent to us. He even took us to his apartment to fill out all the forms. It was a BIG help that Paul speaks french. Laurent's wife served us drinks and kept reassuring me. We were very impressed with their kindness. Don't ever believe that the French are snobs and rude. We didn't find that to be the case. We got a chuckle when Paul asked Laurent what his profession was and he started laughing and said "french cop". Just our luck. We hit a police detective on his way to work! C'est la vie! At the time it was quite tramatic, but now it makes a great story.

This photo is pretty funny. We saw most of Paris by car, and I took this photo of Notre Dame as we drove by. We couldn't stop on the street. We did walk across the Alexander Bridge though, on our walk along the Seine river.

Due to the accident, our night in Paris didn't start until after 11pm. We decided to see the Eiffle Tower anyway. We arrived before midnight, just in time to catch the last lift up to the second level. (We were the only ones in line. The next day, the lines were HUGE! Good timing.) While we were going up, the lights started twinkling and fireworks went off! We would have liked to see that from the ground, but it was very spectacular from inside the tower. It was a highlight for all of us to see the city at night from the Eiffle tower. We were hungry afterwards, and had crepes from a street vendor at 1am! What a day!

Our hotel, Hotel Lecourbe. The rooms were very tiny, but there were seats on the toilet, which is rare for France.

Nadine loved feeding the birds everywhere we went. Baguettes have many uses.