Tuesday 16th – Week 1 – Trocadero, Eiffel Tower, Les Invalides, Champs Elysee, Arc de Triomple, Elysee Palace.....

Walked our feet off today. It started ok, catching the Metro to the Trocadero, but from then on it was all walking. The Trocadero is an open square overlooking the Eiffel Tower, that is the site of three museums – none of which we visited. Down the stairs from the Troc, past the water fountains, over the Seine and voila – the Eiffel Tower and queues everywhere. We'll go up the Eiffel Tower when we return in mid July and arrive first thing in the morning, rather than queue for hours once the queues start building up. Although we were there before 10am, the queues were already hundreds of metres long and moving slowly. From the Eiffel Tower it was down the Parc du Champ de Mars, past the wall of Peace to the Military Ecole, which Napoleon famously graduated from in one year instead of the normal two. They teach world peace and European relations in the second year – sorry, just kidding.

From there, it was down to the Hotel des Invalides, the hospital that Napoleon built to house sick and injured soldiers. We spent some time there, before heading over the Pont Alexandre III (bridge, gold horses, ornate lamp posts etc) and then up the Champs Elysees to the Arc De Triomphe. Again thousands of people on the Champs, but in reality they were all tourists and there wasn't too much that we found of interest. The round about round the Arc De Triomphe was interesting to watch, as it must be ten lanes wide and everybody has to give way to everybody and the only rule seems to be he who goes fastest goes first. Apparently insurance policies don't cover the Arc De Triomphe, so hopefully the GPS won't take us through it on Thursday as we pick up the car quite close to it.

From the Arch, it was down to the Elysee Palace. Within 50 metres of leaving the Arch and the Champs Elysee, the crowds basically vanished and it was really pleasant walking round some of the quiet Parisien streets. Again, lots of swanky shops, with very little, very expensive merchandise and even fewer customers. They didn't look like the type that would appreciate back pack carrying, sneaker wearing tourists, so we carried on our walk eventually ending up back at the Place de la Concorde from where we wandered back through the Louvre to the Saint Germain market where we treated ourselves to a sandwich and coke for lunch after 6 hours of walking.

Dinner was in a very nice local French restaurant. It might sound funny to say French, but there are plenty of Italian, Indian, Greek, Vietnamese and other nationality restaurants in the locality. Despite our best efforts at speaking French, we were handed menus with a big Union Jack on the front of them. When we pulled out our phrase book to understand what was chalked onto the specials blackboard, this seemed to cause the Maitre'd some consternation. He was an intriguing character very much attuned to the needs of his clientelle, with an ear alert for even any falling cutlery, which I found out to my embarrasment after firstly dropping a knife and then a fork and having him come scooting out the door with a replacement literally before I'd had a chance to bend down, pick up the offending item and invoke the 20 second rule.