Another leisurely breakfast at home with our morning croissant purchased from the corner boulangerie. Our plan for the day was to head back down towards the Louvre where we were to do a walking tour about the French Revolution.
First task was to get down to the meeting place which we tackled by using public transport. We are getting very good at using the buses and the metro and enjoying it. We do prefer the buses as you get to see more of the street scenes.
We met our group and headed off with a guide who was pretty passionate about his topic. We can really only give you a quick summation of the tour as it was a very complicated period of time. It covered roughly 100 years around the 19th century and did not involve one revolution but actually three.
Each revolution was sparked by various causes. The first revolution in 1789 was sparked by a complex interplay of social, economic, and political factors, including a financial crisis, widespread inequality, and Enlightenment ideals. The monarchy’s inability to address these issues and its resistance to reform fueled popular unrest and ultimately led to the revolution.
The French are quite a rebellious lot and even today the summer months sees the streets of Paris peppered with numerous protests for whatever is the flavour of the day.
On our wanders we passed by the Olympic Torch Balloon – not very exciting.
We headed back to the apartment following the tour as we were expecting the delivery of the bike between the time window of 2-6pm plus our dear friend Karen was arriving via the Eurostar from London into Paris to spend a few days with us.
Just wanted to include the above photo which was taken from the French doors in our bedroom in the apartment. We are actually staying in what would have been the servants quarters. We are fascinated by all the chimney pots which protrude from the roof of the apartment block. We are staying in one of the Haussmann designed buildings that we mentioned in the blog two days ago and it is exactly as we described.
Di caught the train to Gare du Nord where the Eurostar arrives and mastered the metro stops really well. Fras did not come with her as he was awaiting delivery of the bike box via DHL. It was when she arrived at Gare du Nord that she became unstuck. There are five arrival halls altogether and some of these are split into A and B as well. The place was enormous and the plethora of people hastening around her was overwhelming. She found a spot to hide in the corner after spending nearly 30 minutes to locate the correct arrival platform and await Karen’s arrival. At least the meeting up with Karen was flawless. The girls decided they would get a taxi back to the apartment as the metro is not designed to lug bags through. We have seen very few escalators and certainly no lifts on our travels so far.
Karen has booked an air BnB just a couple of streets over from us as we were not sure just how big our apartment was. As it turns out, the apartment is too small for three of us and this gives Karen her own space.
As to the arrival of the bike box – it did not happen. We had our doubts about it as we felt it would not have made it that quickly to Paris from Frankfurt. We will need to tackle them on Monday to see when we can arrange delivery for next week. It seems the shortest distance is going to be the most problematic.
Steps – 13,965
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