Salzburg –Day 26

It is a beautiful day today, clear skies and a maximum of 23 degrees is forecast. Our first full day in Salzburg starts with us getting organized and heading into the old town to visit the tourist office for advice. After wandering around yesterday afternoon it was clear to us that Salzburg City itself had very little to offer in the way of things to do (unless you like wandering through museum after museum) so we want to go further out to see some sights. We enter the tourist office and there are two "delightful" ladies there ready to assist us. In fact, they are so delightful I suspect they may be French! We get zero help from these two moles and we are pretty much given brochures and told to read them. We head outside trying to work out what we want to do for the next four days and try and get something from these brochures. We decide we want to do the Bavarian mountains, the salt mines and Eagle's Nest tour which all can be done on one day together as a "super saver" tour. We also want to ask about doing the Sound of Music tour which can be done on another day. We can’t quite work out the pricing but we go back into the tourist centre to book the tour and we get slugged €300 ($430 AUD) for the "super saver" tour! I'm starting to think the lady thought I had said I wanted to buy land in the Bavarian mountains and not just look at them. We hold off on the Sound of music tour for the time being because we don't want to fork out another mortgage payment only to find the first tour was rubbish. We leave the tourist centre feeling like we have just been rogered up the back passage and make our way to the funicular that will take us up to the Salzburg Fortress. The lovely gentleman that we purchase our tickets from (I think he was French too) gives us similar advice to the tourist centre (none) and leaves us to our own devices to find out why we forked out more money in Salzburg. We make our way into the funicular carriage for the ride to the Fortress. The tourists here are wonderful too (also French) as they push and shove their way into you without a sorry or an excuse me. We get to the top and the signage is non-existent so we fumble our way around the castle not sure if there is anything on offer to do. The view up here is amazing though and Salzburg looks stunning from this angle with it being surrounded by mountains. The Fortress tour was a bit of a dud though and we bail deciding not to take the funicular back down the hill but instead walk through the gardens that sit high above Salzburg city which will take us back to the apartment via the Augustiner Brewery. The walk through the gardens takes about 45 minutes and when we get to the brewery its 2:30 and we are starving. We get to the door and.......it's shut! The brewery doesn't open until 3pm. Bloody hell!!! We decide to go to a little pizzeria just next to our apartment about 50m away and.......its shut!!! It closes at 2:30 and doesn't open again until 5:30. Ok, we know there's a little café around the corner so we head there.........they don't sell food........FFFFFFAR OUT! We go back to the apartment where the kids snack a little while we wait for 3pm to come around. When it hits 3pm we make our way up the street to the Augustiner Brewery for something to eat and a drink. The brewery is huge with a massive beer garden, an upstairs food stall type set up and a beer hall. Everyone seems to be in the garden so we go upstairs to get some food before coming back down to find a table in the beer garden. I get myself a beer but they don't sell wine so Kris and the kids have a soft drink. The food was disgusting, served on paper plates with throw away wooden knives and forks (which broke after first use). We are looking around not sure why this place has been given good reviews on Trip advisor because all we can see is a crap beer garden with no views and about 200 fat old Austrians occupying it. To be honest, Salzburg is not really doing it for us. To put it plainly, Salzburg is........ummm..........a SHITHOLE! We find the people here to be rude, the old town is ugly, the food is shite and the only thing it has going for it is the views surrounding the city. Supermarkets resemble 7/11s (and we’ve only found two of them) and are only open until 7:30. Fruit and veggie shops do not exist and the place closes on weekends from 2pm on Saturday (so the owners of our apartment told us). We are really disappointed with Salzburg and it was a place we were so looking forward to. We head back to the apartment which thankfully is awesome and we take a bit of a break. Tomorrow will be a long day, we need to be at the bus pick up point at 8:15 and we won't return until 6pm. We need to get to the supermarket so we can buy some food to take with us on the tour so we head back out. As we pass the pizzeria downstairs we thought we'd stop in and make a reservation for tonight. Kris opens the door and no one is in there except a lady so Kris asks "are you open?" "No we are shut today" she says. Of course, silly us, its Wednesday in a major tourist city, why in the hell would they be open! We keep walking gob smacked by this joint so we take the scenic detour through the Mirabell Gardens (major tourist attraction in Salzburg) and we see a lovely big fountain obviously used as a wishing well type fountain. The reason it was obvious was because there was this bum wading around in his jocks collecting up all the coins, alrighty then. We continue walking and the place is dead, nothing is happening. A lot of restaurants are either shut or virtually empty. At this point Salzburg is making Perth look super exciting! We head home and decide to eat in all the while hoping that tomorrow’s tour will be a good one.

Views from the Fortress

Views from the Fortress

Mia working the pupped in the fortress

Tyler working the pupped in the fortress

Kris and I competing for the biggest nerd award.....I think I won!

Washing down the delicious meal from Augustiner Brewery

Wurzburg-Salzburg - Day 25

It's a stunning morning in Wurzburg, not a cloud in the sky as we head downstairs to have breakfast in the hotel restaurant. The available food looks more like lunch than breakfast with an assortment of meats, cheeses, pickles etc. We opt for the crunchy chocolate cereal and the fruit and yogurt. The restaurant is very upper class with nice classy coffee cups, fancy table cloths and some soft Mozartsy type music in the background. That is until Tyler breaks the soft tunes by letting one rip! I look at Tyler trying to be all serious and say "TYLER, WHAT'S THAT YOU???" But I couldn't hold it in after looking at Kris who was already in stitches and we spent the next five minutes rolling around in laughter like school kids. It’s now 9am and we don’t have to catch our train until 11am so we leave breakfast and decide to wander around Wurzburg a bit before we check out. Wurzburg is an awesome place and we wish we had another day here to look around a bit more. We grab some fruit for the train ride, head back to the hotel to grab our bags and walk to the train station. We get to the platform and the board says in German something with the number 15 after it. We assume this to be the train is running 15 minutes late. This is not good because we only have 14 minutes between connecting trains in Munich. As it turns out the train ended up being 20 minutes late so we figure we're in strife. We get on board and sign up for the Wi-Fi so we can check the train times and email the bloke at our accommodation in Salzburg. The information on the net confirms we will arrive 20 minutes late so we find a ticket conductor and let her know our situation. She gets on her hand held device and start writing stuff on the back of our ticket. She tells us to board the next train which is only 15 minutes after our original train but we don't have reservations. This means we will have to try and find non reserved seats or we stand. At this point there is not much we can do except hope the train makes up some time. We start pulling in to Munich so we grab our bags (and when we grab our bags we take up some room, 3 suitcases, 2 backpacks and a fully loaded computer case) and head for the door so we can be first out. When the train arrives its 13:25 and our connecting train departs at 13:27. Problem is, we are on platform 23 which is about 200m long, so once we have run that we have to then get to platform 12. We burst out of the gates like Black Caviar and just start running towards the end of the platform. There is no way we are going to make this train. This kids are up front, Mia's only got a plastic bag with grapes in it so she's gone. Tyler's only got the small suitcase so he's not far behind Mia. I've got 1 of the big suitcases; a backpack and the computer bag while Kris is bring up the rear with the other suitcase and a backpack. I feel like I'm about to have a heart attack as we get to the end of the platform and turn in the direction of platform 12. When we get there the train is still there. We jump through the first door which at one point I thought may have been the door to the locomotive, and we make it. We do the mad look around to make sure all the info tells us the train is going to Salzburg. We are all puffing like crazy when we get to our seats. Lucky for us they were only in the next carriage. When we get there, a couple is in our seats but as seasoned travellers we are wise to the "get out of our seats" mode you need to be in. The train ride from Munich to Salzburg is a cracker with views of the mountains. We arrive in Salzburg and jump in a cab to our apartment. When we get there the owner and his wife are there to meet us (normally its someone else that does this but she is unwell). They are both really nice people and they make us feel at home straight away. The apartment is stunning and it is huge. Again there is two bedrooms, one with a king bed and one with a queen bed. The queen bed has the views over Salzburg so we go for that and the kids score the king bed again. We dump our stuff and head straight out to check out the Old Town of Salzburg. We are within walking distance and it is straight along the river. The Old Town of Salzburg is a bit strange, a bit like a rabbit warren. The is a festival on as well that reminds me a bit of the Oktoberfest with a huge beer tent, rides and food stalls and heaps of lederhosen. We want around for a while snacking at the festival before getting some groceries and heading back to the apartment. We decide not go out for dinner as the two days of train travel have worn us out. Salzburg officially welcomes us at around 7 o'clock as they start firing the cannons from the fortress high on the hill which we have an amazing view of from our windows. Then at 8 o'clock the Scroop welcome continues with fireworks just below the fortress.

Mia at brekky

Now this is a fancy pants restaurant...

Me and the kids on the Wurzburg Bridge

A coffee house on the corner of the bridge

Waiting for the train to Munich

300km/h, but if we are going to make our connecting train to Salzburg it better pick up the pace

A view from the train window from Munich to Salzburg

A view from our apartment in Salzburg

 

And a welcome fit for the Scroops.

 

Brugge-Wurzburg - Day 24

We get up early grab our gear and make our way to the Markt Square in the hope of catching a bus to the train station. When we get there, a taxi driver passes by so we hail him down. The taxi driver, or Mr Happy, is a grumpy old dude and the best we manage from him is a grunt but at least he didn't rip us off when we arrived at the train station. The platform is packed as we get ready to board the train and for this 1 hour leg to Brussels and there are no reservations for this leg so we give the kids strict instructions "While we are struggling with the bags push in front of everyone and secure 4 seats together. They mastered this on the leg to Brugge but they are up against some stiff competition here. When the doors open the kids successfully push in without a care for anyone and Kris makes it on a few people later. I on the other hand am struggling as the old grannies are giving as good as they get and I get shuffled back a few people. When I finally get on I can see where the kids are so I try to make my way along the carriage when this bloke just sits down in the seat meant for me. He has no intention of moving and when I ask him politely if he would mind swapping seats with me so that we could all sit together he shows me his amputated arm and says "I'd prefer to sit here". So, because of him we had to sit apart. The rest of the journey goes ok as we make a second change at Frankfurt and arrive about 15 minutes late into Wurzburg. This concerns me a bit because we will be jumping on this train again tomorrow and they didn't seem too concerned that they were running late. For instance, when they arrived at Frankfurt they were announcing platform numbers for connecting trains that had already left!!! Anyway, no need to worry about that at the moment. We get off the train and when we get to the concourse the first thing we see is a sign for Hotel Wurzburger Hof indicating 300m this way. As this is our hotel we now know where to go and we also know its walking distance. We get to the hotel and the receptionist was fantastic and we head to our room. The room is amazing. It's a 2 bedroom apartment with a king and a queen bed. The queen is out in the main area so we give the king to the kids and they are over the moon. We dump our stuff and head out and we soon realize that Wurzburg is awesome, what a fantastic joint. The place is surrounded by steep hills that are lined with vineyards. We make our way through the main square down to an old stone pedestrian bridge that crosses the river and there is a restaurant/bar on the corner of the bridge. People who have bought wine from the bar are just wandering around the bridge while drinking. We go inside and get a table on the balcony to the side of the bridge and get a stone of beer while Kris goes the wine. After about half an hour Kris and I are starting to feel woozy. We think the train ride has made us feel this way. Train travel is pretty bad when it comes to swaying and it's a lot like being on a boat. The train rocks from side to side at 250 km/h and after 6 hours you feel a bit sea sick. Anyway, we bail after one drink and go home to get ready for dinner. We end up going to a local Mexican restaurant and the food was great before we head home to bed.

Waiting for the train in Brugge

 

Transferring in Frankfurt

 

On the train to Wurzburg

 

Arriving at Wurzburg

 

Free slippers in the hotel. These are the things that impress the kids

 

German sausage....mmmmm

 

The view while we have a drink

 

The view from our room.

The train station is at the end of the street with vineyards on the hills.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brugge - Day 23

Today starts the same way as yesterday with Kris and Tyler going down to collect our bakery items. Mia complains she's too tired so she doesn't go down the stairs. That's fair enough because the stairs can be a pain. It seems on a holiday through Europe you can't avoid stairs. Our apartment in London had 43 stairs. Our apartment in Edinburgh had 82 stairs, Paris 52 stairs and now Brugge 26 stairs. The Brugge stairs are like the ones in the Paris apartment, tiny and spiralling and are actually quite dangerous. Anyway, after brekky we head straight to the Bell-fort, the city's bell tower. We are first in line for when the doors open at 9:30am and we make our way up more stairs, 382 of them to the top. The stairs are tiny and spiralling and at times there is limited headroom. At the top is a fantastic view over Brugge. While we are up there the bells start ringing and they are loud. We hang around a bit longer to hear the bells go off at 10 o'clock and they are even louder. We make our way down and we have to do it via the same set of stairs as on the way up so now we are battling other people coming up the stairs as we are battling the tiny stairs down. We survive the descent and make our way to The Halve Maan brewery for our tour. The tour is lead by a creepy older lady who takes us around the brewery. The tour is great and when we get to the end we get a free beer (Kris and the kids have an OJ). We grab a table inside and order lunch (we would have grabbed a table outside where it's much nicer but it seems the best spots in Europe are reserved for all the filthy cigarette smokers). So, we're just sitting there talking and eating our lunch and there is this older grandpa looking dude sitting at the table next to us. All of a sudden he leans over onto one cheek of his arse and let's rip! And I'm not talking a little squirter I'm talking a big prolonged sloppy fart, we thought the guy had messed himself!! We all look at each other and just burst out laughing, trying not to laugh too loud but this guy hasn't missed a beat, business as usual for him, he just keeps eating looking straight ahead. We finish our lunch and leave grandpa to enjoy his aroma. We decide to go for a coffee at this coffee shop we passed earlier that had amazing cakes in the window, cakes similar to Paris. We go in and find a seat and when the waitress walks past, Kris says "Excuse me, how do we order?" the waitress looks at Kris with this snooty look and says "I give you da menu!!". Ok, so we look at the menu and we decide we will have a cake with our coffee but you have to go to the front of the shop to choose a cake. I do that and Ms Snooty comes back for our order. Kris explains I'm just off choosing a cake and she says she'll come back. She didn't indicate what day she was coming back so we wait and wait and then we wait some more. Kris had had enough of Ms Snooty by now so she suggests we bail and we collect up our gear and walk. This is something we are getting good at, walking when we get rude service. The people in Brugge are a bit indifferent, some people are lovely and some are stuck up and arrogant. We decide to go back to the apartment and have a break for a while. The kids sit down to watch a movie that they have selected from the DVD collection at reception and Kris and I hit the honesty bar. Kris decides to try a beer and selects one of the apple beers in the fridge. Not being a beer drinker she hasn't tried any beers but she figures this is probably the closest thing to not being a beer. We go upstairs and open the big windows and put our feet up on the window sill and have a drink. Kris lasts about 2 sips into her beer and says "Nope, too beery for me". I have a sip and it tastes like fizzy apple juice, I can't taste beer in at all but hey, at least she gave it a go. After the movie we head back out to do a boat cruise along the canals. They squeeze about 30 people into these long, shallow boats and cruise around the canals for about half an hour. It was really good fun and you get to see a side of Brugge you wouldn't normally see. Aft that we wander some more trying to find a place to have a drink but the cigarette smoke gets the better of us and we decide to go back to the apartment and raid the honesty bar again. The kids watch another movie before we head out again, this time to get back on the horse and carriage to do the tour again. We ask the girl who is taking us around if the kids can sit up front with her and she said the she can allow one, so Mia rides up front first and Tyler changes over half way around. By the time we jump off it’s become dark so we look around for somewhere to eat. We try Cambrinus again but we are out of luck. The place is heaving and there is no available table until at least 9:30. We go over the road and give the Italian restaurant a try. The manager was Indian, the cook was Asian so we were expecting some unusual food but it was very nice. After dinner it's back to the apartment to pack our bags as we need to be up early to leave for Wurzburg in the morning.

View from the bell-fort

 

View from the bell-fort

Tyler enjoying his chocolate waffle

 

Mia enjoying it up front on the carriage

 

Brugge - Day 22

This morning the kids get up and go with Kris next door to the reception area to pick up our bakery order. They come back with croissants and pastries and they were fantastic. After brekky we go for a wander and we find an amazing church in the Burg which is the square next to the main Markt Square. We have a look inside before continuing on. We spend most of the morning wandering around and battling the crowds. There a lot of day trippers that come to Brugge and it seems the place gets very crowded between about 10am and 5pm. We get to the brewery "The Halve Maan" which is another recommendation to visit. They do a brewery tour so we book in for 11am tomorrow as they are fully booked for today and we have a 1 o'clock reservation at Cambrinus for lunch we need to get to. We make our way back to Cambrinus and the place is packed again so lucky we made that reservation. We order our meals and drinks and I keep sampling The Belgium beers and it is really difficult to decide which one to have. This particular bar sells over 400 different beers, so it says anyway and Belgium make over 1000 apparently. We stumble out of there a few hours later and have a bit more of a wander through some of the chocolate shops. In Brugge, the chocolate shops are amazing and they are everywhere. We head back to the apartment for a bit of a rest and I go down to the honesty bar at reception and pick out a couple of beers to have in the garden and a bottle of red for Kris. In Belgium, most of the beers have a specific glass the beer needs to be drunk from. The honesty bar has a huge range of beers with all the associated glasses so the bloke that runs the joint here has really put some effort in. We head out the back to the apartment gardens and it's nice and quite while we are having a drink until the noisy Germans from upstairs come down and make more noise than Subi oval on prelim night. Not only are they noisy but they're stupid because they're in the pool and the water is freezing. After a while they nick off and leave us in peace again. We finish our drinks and head off for another wander checking the joint out and we decide to get some of the famous Belgium frites. Kris orders them plain, without the sauce and I start to think it must be the sauce that makes them famous because these just taste like chips from Maccas. We don't have dinner because we are all still full from lunch so we make our way back to the apartment. The kids head off to bed and I make another trip to the honesty bar before calling it a night.

The church in the Burg

The famous Brugge spot

 

Cambrinus for lunch

 

Another beer, another beer glass

 

A panorama of the honesty bar

 

Brugge in the evening

 

 

 

 

Paris-Brugge Day 21

This morning we get up and finish packing before walking down to the corner to catch a cab to Gare du Nord for our train ride to Bruges. We wait about 5 minutes and a cab comes along. We load our gear in the boot and the driver heads off. We get to Gare du Nord and the fare comes to 10 euro 30 so I dive in to my pocket to give the taxi driver 11 euro. He starts saying "No, no, no, blah, blah, blah.... I have no idea what he's going on about so he licks his finger and and draws 18 on the cars dash board and showing me four fingers to represent the four suitcases in the boot. This thieving prick is charging me 8 extra euro because we have luggage. We know this is not normal because we have done this cab ride three times before. This is the final indignation of our stay in Paris. This grubby little arrogant French shit head is ripping us off. The arsehole didn't even lift any of the bags in or out of the boot. We assume if we don't pay then he won't open the boot so we don't really have a choice. The major tourist cities of the world can at times have a way of leaving you with a bitter taste in your mouth after your stay. It reminds me of when we left Venice on our last holiday and the water taxi guy ripped us and some other passengers off. So, the train arrives on time and we get to Brussels without any issues. We have to change at Brussels to the local line for Brugge and that poses a little bit more of a problem. The platform number initially said 16 and when we get there it changes to 15. It's not a huge drama because they share the same platform, just different sides, but It causes mass confusion and people are grabbing conductors and asking which platform they should be on, the conductors are giving conflicting information, it's just a nightmare but we eventually board the correct train and make it to Brugge without any further issues. Once in Brugge we catch a cab and he drops us of at the door of our accommodation. We are staying in a group of apartments owned and run by the same person and that person greets us at the door. Dave at work recommended the apartment because he stayed here when he visited Brugge. The owner is a very nice bloke and goes out of his way to make sure we have everything we need for our stay, including an iPad loaded with tourist information and an app that allows us to have the local bakery deliver fresh bread, buns, cakes, pastries etc to our door for 7am the next morning. We get the keys to our apartment and it is huge. It is probably one of the best apartments we have stayed in on both our holidays. Dave also gave me some of his recommendations for pubs and restaurants so we dump our gear and head straight out to the first of the recommended pubs, Cambrinus, which is about 50m down the road. We are all starving by now and the place is packed but we manage to score a table and the waiter brings us a food and drinks menu which is about the size of an encyclopaedia. The first few pages of the menu is food and wine and the rest is dedicated to beer. We order our food and drinks and settle in for the arvo. The food ends up being amazing, some of the best food we have had on our holiday so far. I ask the waiter "What time are children allowed to stay in the pub until". He looks at me as if to say, what a stupid question and replies "As long as they want, as long as you are with them". "Ahhhhh" I say to Kris, "I love this place already". We must of hung around for at least 3 hours and by the time we left we were starting to feel the pinch. The beers in Belgium have very high alcohol content ranging from about 5% to 12%. After that we went for a bit of look around and stumbled on a supermarket so we stocked up on groceries. When we get to the checkout Kris had some milk she thought was "Hi-lo" so the lovely young girl says to Kris "Did you want full cream milk"? Kris says "Oh sorry is that full cream"? The girl says "Yes, but don't worry I'll shoot down the aisle and change it for you" and she rushes off and comes back with the hi-lo. We were gob-smacked. We have crossed the border and we are definitely not in Paris anymore! We head back to the apartment to check out the footy score (we were listening to the last quarter on the AFL website prior to going out to lunch and the Hawks were losing) and we see the Hawks have come back to win and we are all jumping around high fiving each other.....even Kris was excited!! We shower up and headed back out for another look around at about 8pm. Earlier, when we were at the pub, we noticed these horse and carriage rides going past so because we missed out on the boat cruise we said to the kids we will have a ride on the horse and carriage. €39 for a half hour ride around the historic part of Brugge and it was fantastic. The kids loved it and so did Kris and I. After our ride we find a coffee shop and have a coffee and waffle before heading back to the apartment for the night.

Arriving at our Brugge accommodation

Inside Cambrinus

Which beer do I try? 

This one.....?

This one.....?
 

This one.....?

The kids find their chocolate.....

I find my chocolate.....



Paris – Day 20

This morning we didn’t get moving until around 11 o’clock as we all had a bit of a sleep in and a lazy morning. After brekky we head down to the post office to see about sending some of the crap souvenirs we have acquired to date. Due to the odd dimensions of the box we need to fit everything into we are informed that we will be charged around €150 to mail it back to Australia. If we use one of the French Postal Services little shoe boxes it will be “much cheaper”. Looks like we will be carting this stuff around Europe for a little bit longer. On the way to the post office we spot a new patisserie over the road from our apartment that is selling the most amazing cakes so we stock up. We have some of these for lunch when we get back from the post office and leave a couple for dinner. After lunch we take the Metro from our stop, Rambuteau, which is about 50m away, down to where the Catacombes tour starts from in Montparnasse. The Paris Catacombes only allow 200 people in at a time so apparently it can get very busy. We have looked at trying to book tickets for the “skip the line” tours but it was booked out until October and Trip Advisor suggests the wait can be hours and then you might not get in before the last departure of 4pm. Our strategy was to get there after 2pm and that way we hope most people would have all ready done the lining up and we may sneak in before 4pm. We go fully prepared to wait for 2 hours and we take food and water for the kids and even let them take their iPods so they have something to do while in line. As it turned out the line was moving very quick and we only had to wait 30 minutes. Amazingly the admission price was only €8 each for adults and the kids were free. We enter down a tiny spiral stone staircase with 130 steps into a large underground tunnel system. These tunnels seem to go for ever and we cover 2km of these on our way trough. When we get about ¾ of the way through we hit the bones. It is an amazing sight to see walls and walls of bones, in some sections I reckon the bones were about 3m deep, and they just went on and on and on throughout the tunnels. This was a real treat to see this and we are so glad we decided to take the punt and get down there, one of the highlights of Paris. We wander through the tunnels for about an hour and a quarter before taking the spiral staircase back up to ground level. We catch the train back to the apartment picking up our regular dinner on the way. After dinner we walk down to Pont Neuf to do the river cruise along the Seine. When we went down yesterday to buy tickets we were told by the “lovely lady” at the ticket counter that there was “no need to buy a ticket, just come down 15 minutes before departure time”. So we get down there ½ an hour before departure time and there is a queue that was so long I thought we were gonna have to hail a cab to get to the end of it. And, there is one person on the ticket booth. To add salt to the wound there are people going straight in who have obviously bought tickets earlier. Great. We line up and by the time we get to the ticket booth the boat is just about full and the only seats left are the shitty ones and at €40 we decide to bail. That sort of ruined our night. We think of other things we can do but we are all pretty shagged from a few long days and we also have to pack our bags before we leave tomorrow. So we wander back to the apartment taking the scenic route around the Latin Quarter and behind the Notre Dame before getting home around 9pm. We love Paris and we are sad to leave but we are looking forward to arriving in Bruges. There are 2 things we do not like about Paris and they certainly will not be missed. 1) The cigarette smoke. Paris reeks of cigarette smoke and you cannot eat, drink, walk and do anything without someone making you enjoy their pleasure. 2) The Parisian people. I say Parisian because I am not sure this applies to all of France. This is said a lot but you have to experience it first hand to truly believe it. They are the most stuck up, arrogant, ignorant group of people I have come across. They do not move out of the way when they walk past you, not even a little twist of the shoulder to avoid a collision which happens often on the narrow, crowded footpaths around Paris. They look at you with absolute disdain, even the people who are in the business of tourism! Anyway, take those things out of Paris and this place would be beyond compare.


Cake selection - 1 of 4

 

 Cake selection - 2 of 4

 Cake selection - 3 of 4

 

Cake selection - 4 of 4

 

 The kids at our Metro stop on the way to the Catacombes

 

  The underground passage ways

 

  Mia in the Catacombes

 

 Paris Catacombes

 

  Paris Catacombes

 

Our typical Paris Dinner