France is on Strike

We went to Paris. The place was on Strike. The weather cold and wet and the Louvre was shut!

We hit the Eurostar from London to Paris. We were excited. We had two main missions for the day.

1) Get a photo of the me next to the Mona Lisa for Charlotte. **

2) Go up the Eiffel Tower

** There is a super Italian restaurant in Albert Park called Ricardos. Above the fireplace there they have a picture of the Mona Lisa and little Lottie loves it.

So we arrive at the Gard Du Nord after an easy journey through the Channel Tunnel. Now taxi queues at this station are already renowned to be bad but with the strike and the blocking of the petrol stations there was about 200 people queuing in the rain. ouch! Dad was not impressed and he whipped me to the other side of the station and harassed a taxi driver dropping a customer to take us. I think his complete command of the French language helped. Well when I say complete command he was able to tell the taxi driver his name, his age and appeared to be ordering a beer! Still next stop the Louvre.

The Louvre was shut. Here is what I thought of that....(see photo)

So what should we do...taxis were hard to find. We could have hit the Metro but there was even talks of that being disrupted.

Alas a guaranteed way to travel the city and bring us to where we wanted to go. We jumped on a Tour Bus. It was heading to Notre Dame and then up the Champs Elysses. Dad had told me we had some very important business to take care of on the Champs Elysees.

He said we had to eat a Jambon et Fromage Baguette.

Dad explained that when I was in mummy's Tummy they went to Paris for a weekend before moving to Montreal. One of their favourite memories was walking down this fabulous Boulevard and chomping on these great sandwiches.

So that is what we did. Cheers to you Mum.

Shortly after that we headed to to the Eiffel Tower. You can see in the photo I am wearing it as a hat!

So we queued for the tickets. Queued for security, Queued for the lift to the first level. Queued for the lift for the second level and finally we made it to the top of this quite marvelous structure.

The views from up high were amazing. I have to admit that I was a bit frightened going up to the top. Dad reminded me that this is why we came and I got some courage up and made it all the way.

Here is a photo from the top. I bought a small souvenir tower from the shop and then we hit the road back to the train station to catch an early train back to London.

We completed half of the mission. We did buy a postcard for Charlotte though that had the Mona Lisa on it. Dad was grumbling about the strikes and suggested that if the workers were made to work the days they had off on strikes they would quite easily extend the extra 2 years the govt want them to work until retirement! Whatever that means.!

Anyway back to our hotel. A big bath and room service beckons.

Will

PS Room service is brilliant. Here is me eating my macaroni cheese with poached salmon in my jammies.