France

Had a leisurely breakfast this morning with those remaining at the hotel from our tour group, each discussing where we were off to next.

Checked out of the hotel and got a cab to the Europcar Rental car desk a short distance away and went throug the rigmarole of paperwork, upgrading to a car with GPS, staff helping us put into English language then off we went.

Must have been Paris as the stressful place, but I'm starting to feel a little better now about driving here although still have my tricky moments!

Much of the driving the last 2 days to reach Bordeaux has been tollways and we've now learnt the ticketing and payment system a bit better so there's always cash on hand to feed the machine. Very much a user-pays system, seems to have cost us about $40 odd to drive down here using various toll roads and side roads. As you reach a toll gate entering the system, a ticket only is issued and upon leaving, put the ticket back in, the machine tells you how much and you entr the appropriate cash although change does spit out as well.

First stop today was the Villers-Bretonneux memorial outside the city of Amiens. This memorial represents 11,000 names on the walls of the memorial of those died in battle in the area.

Next stop was in the village of Villers-Bretonneux itself and to the Victoria School and the Australian Museum. What an amazing museum - could have spent hours in there. Every child in the school studies Australia and understands what part the Australians played in WW1. The school hall is lined with timber brought from Australia, there are large photographs of scenes from Australia and in the playground a large sign is displayed with the words "Do Not Forget Australia".
All up, a great visit.

One of our planned activities whilst here has been to do a 'Battlefield' run for Kemm so this morning we headed to another area in Paris ( a hotel at which we will stay one more night when we return from tour), where we met up with out tour group of 16 and set off out of Brisbane to head up to the northern France battlefields.

The visits to all these sites are great for Kemm and I and most of what I've written in the last day or so is so that we can keep track of what we've done but may seem a little over the top to some so apologies that our 'holiday fun' hasn't wuote commenced yet for more interesting reading!.....

Lots of walking the last 2 days but had a wonderful time just taking in the Paris culture and the people within. It's a fabulous place - nothing like our vast shopping centres all under one roof, everything here is within tiny shops all set within mostly the ground floor of the hundreds of beautiful buildings around the city.

The tourists of course are everywhere! Us included I guess. There are cafe's, boulangeries (bakeries), cheese shops, chocolate shops, patisseries and more cafe's! The done thing is to join in at the people watching seats in front of all the cafe's and just enjoy doing nothing - lined up with everyone else.

Click on the title of this article to get the link to the photos.
PHOTOS -
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152167852954862.1073741843.6...

The day began with us having passed through 16 hours in bed - the body has needed some catching up and a 4pm 'lie-down' late yesterday afternoon turned into an all night event with both of us waking around 4am for a couple of hours then another 2 or 3 hours of sleep!

Ventured out about 10am for a wander and some breakfast - yes please - that breakfast (couldn't read a word so just used the suggestion provided!). Croissant, baguette, orange juice and expresso coffee. All good.

Arrived in Paris and made it to our hotel about 8am and fully expected to leave our luggage and wander which is exactly what happened.

I did however grab out of my suitcase, my heavy red jacket and my camera. Badly need for the jacket and its about 15 degrees and drizzle rain so a bit of a miserable day!

We are located a stones throw from the Notre Dame Cathedral and having not actually made it there last time in Paris, we wandered firstly to a local cafe for a coffee top up then over to the Cathedral.

Our 4 days in paris is now over and we are on the way back up to Amsterdam to meet up with our cruise boat to take us down the Rhine to Budapest.
Paris is a fabulously city with streets lined with open air cafes and restaurants everywhere. The bread served here with every meal is absolutely delightful and I have made a pact with myself to not eat any bread whilst on the boat!!! We'll see! I have eaten more bread in the past 4 days than I think I have for a month - that being said, not one piece of it was the stodgy old supermarket loaf bread, it's all baguettes and french sticks and all freshly made each day - yum! And of course Kemm and I have indulged in the odd bottle of wine or 2 - but hey, this is Paris and what more need we say!