Last Day in Paris!

We once again slept in and had a hard time waking at 9am!!  But we packed up our bags and were out by 11.  Lucky for us Jean Charles (the guy from who we rented the apartment) said we could leave our bags there as long as we were back by 5pm to pick them up.

We headed down via Metro ( we have the hang of this system now- and it is awesome, nothing seems more than 2 tube rides away) to the Pont Neuf.  We wanted to take the boat cruise on the Seine, and arrived at the boat place a hour too early, the boat tickets didn't go on sale until 1pm.  As we were leaving the boat terminal a girl asked if we had yet purchased our tickets, we said no and she gave us a piece of paper that she said was good for 2 tickets. Sounded good to us! We took a walk along the Seine which was lovely.  I stopped to take a look at some lovely water colours a guy was painting - I asked how much and he said E15- not bad, I must have looked sceptical though, as next thing I know he is yelling at me "Americans want cheap E1 prints- these are not prints!! You go and don't come back here!"  Yikes well I guess I didn't want one anyway!

After our stroll we were back at the boat depot and only had to buy tickets for the girls- a nice E26 savings- thanks strange lady for the free tickets…

The Pont Neuf

People's home with cars et al.

this guy tells Parisiens the tide.

smallest house in Paris.

We had a lovely boat cruise up the Seine from the pont neuf all the way to the Eiffel Tower and back again.  Learnt a lot about the different sites and we were back in no time at all it seemed.

By this time the family was starving and lunch/early dinner seemed to be in order.  We found a lovely Italian joint for lunch - pasta and pizza all round.

We had about an hour and half to kill, so we visited the Consiergerie - this was the jail that people went to before the guillotine - we saw the cell that Marie Antoinette was kept in  before her beheading- pretty interesting place.

Then it was metro and back to pick up our bags.  

live statues

the great hall of the conciegerie

Thello to Venice.

We thought that it might be easier to catch a taxi to the station as it was rush hour after all.  Back at the apartment, we gather our bags and said goodbye to our host who was cleaning for the next visitors due to arrive at 6.  We called a taxi- but there phone just rang and rang - we had to walk down to the taxi stand, but this was right at the Metro so we figured we would just catch the metro- us and our big backpacks got onto the metro and headed to the Gare de Lyon for our train ride to Venice. We arrived at the station a little early but it was pretty interesting people watching at this busy hub. The girls spotted out train- the Thello pulling in and we boarded with ease.

The compartment is pretty small and apparently sleeps 6- no idea where they would all fit- so thank goodness we booked for 4 only. 

We had our snacks, played a few rounds of Uno and sat back for the ride.  After a bit of figuring out we had the beds sorted.  The girls are now watching movies on their iPads as we settle down for the night.  We will be in Venice at 9:30am.

Goodbye Paris we will miss you- and we had tons of fun- 'til next time.