(1) brekky was at 7:30am (woke up 7am and was one of the first to arrive)
(2) coach ride was fairly slow (Paris morning traffic) considering the proximity of our drop-off point for the day - roundabout next to Seine/Louvre gardens.
(3) I dashed off to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa/Denon Wing (there are 3 wings - i only saw one) Weather-wise it was spitting rain, but not heavily... I exited the Louvre via the Lion Gate *Note: anyone going to the Louvre - avoid the queues and enter via the Lion Gate!!!
(4) walked along the garden/river side and finally got to the river cruise landing - about halfway beween the Louvre and Eiffel Tower... the cruise was great and fortunately the weather had cleared up - so I made up in terms of the no of pics taken...
(5) Lunch was at a place called Eiffel Tower Restaurant/Cafe - around the corner from the landmark. I walked in and the waiter immediately addressed me in English - "What table would I like?" - NOT happy with this as I wanted to practice my French... I ate a beef tartare - in a similar arrogant fashion the waiter said: "Are you sure? It's raw beef!" [I know waht beef tartare is... sigh]
(6) in between the cafe and the Eiffel Tower I saw this interesting building wall completely covered in vine/grass except for the windows...
(7) I mucked around at the base of the Eiffel Tower (ET for short from now on) before I decided that with under an hour, I would dash up the ET instead of waiting in queues for the elevator... (no queues for walking up the stairs!)
(8) on the first stage I ran into a work colleague who has been holidaying in the US as well as now in Europe! Small World!!!
(9) with time running out (bike tour meets at 3pm South Tower base) I had to take to the elevator to the second stage. views of Paris were awesome and totally worth the climb! Didn't have enough time to go to the final/third stage, so caught the elevator down...
(10) met 7 other TopDeck guys who with other tourists embarked on the bike tour. We waited for quite a while, and fitting out took another 15min due to the large size of the group - about 30 of us in total doing the bike tour. we would ride and stop, with the second last stop being a 30min cafe break in the Louvre gardens... saw more of the Armoury/Military Academy and Napoleon's tomb - similiar to the bus tour the night before... but this time in detail.
(11) TopDeck organised picnic dinner at 7pm. We all tried the escargot - one NZer really liked them! (but he also likes cows - part of his profession...)
(12) Cabaret at Paradis Latin. Basically - I picked ALL options that topDeck offered for Paris. was the only single guy here... plenty of single gals tho! on our table it was like a bottle of wine to 2 ppl... lotsa drinking!!! the performers were all very talented; the topless girls were very slim and muscular, some a little bony even... O_o the male performers were ok, not very buff, but ok... my favourite bit was this carousel of motorcycles ridden by hot hot girls in leather boots, the jacket and helmet. they first removed the helmets and did that hair wave thing... then they removed their jackets!?!
(13) after the Cabaret a group of us returned to the hotel via the Paris Metro - my main memory of this experience was that our TopDeck tour host kept yelling out "TopDeck" @ time we had to get off the train... (this would also be repeated for marshalling us all together thru-out the whole tour around Europe!!!
(14) got to the hotel ~12:30am so a really really long day. Apparently I slept almost immediately.
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