20th Sept – Paris – Just a little Champagne Please

Well after an action-packed five days (discussed in the last BLOG update), we joined my University friend Chris, his brother and girlfriend in the 7^th arrondissement in Paris for an extra 2 days. For those who do, and also those that don’t know Paris, the 7^th is just a 2 mins walk to the Eiffel Tower! Mark (Chris’ brother) gained a scholarship to Science Po University to study for 2 yrs and he’s in the middle of that time now. He’s managed to get a three-month work experience at UNESCO where he’s working now. He very kindly let us stay whilst also hosting his parents (traveling with their French cousins), his brother (traveling from a Viennese conference) and distant cousins who live in Paris

Chris' mum, Andie and Mark

On the Saturday evening we had drinks and nibbles at Mark’s flat and then went to a late dinner at his local Italian restaurant and had a lovely meal (although a bit pricey). On Sunday after a later than planned exit (Chris, get off the phone!), we managed to get in line for the Eiffel Tower on a beautiful bright (but crisp) day and after 1h30m, had seen all it had to offer. We walked all over the 8^th, 16^th and back to the 7^th through Le Grand Palais and the Museum and gardens of Rodin. Le Grand Palais was an old Exhibition Hall, (similar in scale and age to Melbourne’s Exhibition Centre) but unused and closed up for the last 12 yrs. They are redeveloping it now and had it open for only 2 weeks before it being ready (completely) for tourists & Parisians) from next April.

Mark and Tam at Grand Palais

Sunday night, Chris, Mark and I had a quiet night after a long walk during the day and we were keen to finally see what our Citroen looked like and a bit stressed about getting on the roads!

Chris, Tam and Mark in front of something important

Monday finally arrived and we got to the Citroen office by about 9.30am.

Tam and our car

After finally seeing our new car (grey-green) we went through HOW to use it and Mark started off out of the garage and I promptly directed him in the opposite direction to how we wanted to go! This was only the first of several minor detours on the first day’s driving. It was recovered fairly quickly (read about 7 blocks) and we eventually got onto the infamous ‘Peripherique’ which crawled along for over 40 mins to our exit. We finally arrived in Champagne region (Epernay) at the Moet & Chandon house at 2.30pm, after finding out the tour started soon; we skipped lunch in favour of a tour. Well we were starving by 4pm and couldn’t find anything to eat, so decided to hop in the car on the way to Luxembourg thinking there’d be a café/ petrol place soon. At 5.30pm we finally had dinner – I just can’t hold out that long! We reached Luxembourg at 8pm and found a place to settle for the night.

Champagne vines