Well, everyone had better appreciate the trouble gone into writing this… It turns out that keyboards in France are different to those everywhere else. Just small differences (the letters ‘q’ and ‘a’ have swapped places, as have ‘;’ and ‘m’) but its enough to make the thought of typing an email horrendous. Anyway, enough complaining, we are in Paris, after all! Arrived after a very long night of sleeping in Glasgow airport – we were 3 of at least 100 other people who decided to make the smokers lounge our bed for the night. We were the odd ones out – we didn’t bring mattresses or sleeping bags, unlike the many others. Although it was nice and sunny in Scotland, Paris was windy and raining. So very typical of our luck!

We’ve been eating our way through all the delicacies of Paris – baguette with jam for brekky, baguette with cheeses for lunch and baguettes and snails for dinner. Well, at least that’s the way it seems. We also have nutella crepes for desert, accompanying each meal. Of course, if we get sick of all the cheese we can take a break and have a bottle of 2 euro wine instead…

Of course we’ve been seeing the sights as well as eating. Kinda. We make sure our sight-seeing fits around the eating, don’t want to miss a meal! A couple of nights ago, we climbed the Eiffel Tower. Alot of steps (not as many as the Yellow Mountains in China), but definitely worth it. The view across the city at night was fantastic. Last night we had a picnic in the gardens in front of the Eiffel Tower, thankfully the small children didn’t come near our area, we must have been scowling enough to keep them away. We’ve also gone and seen Le Sacré-Coeur, a really big churchy thing on the hill behind our hotel. The dome was amazing to see, all the tourists filing past, one-by-one was just hilarious. Notre Dame was similar – an spectacular building, but the amount of tourists around was just frightening.

The Eiffel Tower at night

The catacombs were great. A couple of hundred years ago, it was decided that the cemeteries were too full, so the French decided to dig up all the bodies and dump them in an abandoned mine. At some stage, the person in charge decided to do it decoratively, and so all the bones are lined up, using a combination of skulls and femurs to create patterns in the walls. The over-all effect is quite unique – eerie and intriguing all at the same time.

Skull and Crossbones at the Catacombs

We’ve also seen the rest of the traditional sights, such as the Louvre (got to see the Mona Lisa, should have seen the tourists at that place!) and the Arc de Triomphe (huge huge round-about, so many cars). We also spent a great cuople of hours wandering around Versailles, enjoying the gardens and looking over King Louis XIII and his son, Louis XIV’s chateus. The rest of our time has been spent soaking up the atmosphere (whilst eating crepes) and enjoying our very own bathroom. Now we’re preparing for our week in Germany, should be a heap of fun, will swap from bread to snags… luv yas, bobs