Monday - the rain

The day started less than happily - with no hot water!!  Yikes.  I had a cold shower, but was not happy.  We rang the company & after being talked through how to play with the fuse box we seemed to get things happening.  But it is a storage heater, so there would be no hot water for ages.

It had to happen.  Today started with light rain & the only variability all day until we got home close to midnight was its intensity.  It never quite stopped & at times it was heavy.

Given this we decided to buy umbrellas & go walking.  We got to Notre Dame - about a 3 km walk & queued to get in.  Worth the visit - 13M people a year do it!  But the line to get to the top of the bell tower was over 100 long, in the rain & barely moving so we gave that a miss.

Lunch in a small bistro was nice then back out walking.  We thought we'd check on where we were leaving for our river cruise so walked about 2 kms up Rue de Rivoli - taking in the sites, shops etc.  We popped over to the Louvre forecourt.  The line to go in was huge.  We had not planned to go in, but this certainly reinforced the decision.  So up past the Tuileries gardens to the tour operators office & then a circuitous wander home.  Along the way we could see - well almost see - the Eiffel Tower shrouded in cloud.  This reinforced our decision not to buy predated tickets for the tower before we left home.

We took a few hours off at home drying our clothes etc.  And then off we went for our night activities.  We caught the metro down to near the river & were then in the hands of the tour operators.  We had a 1 hour boat trip along the Seine starting at the Eiffel Tower & heading up stream past Notre Dame, under 22 bridges (I think) with a commentary along the way about the buildings, history etc - very gushy about Paris being the centre of the known universe & best at everything - but hey what did we expect?  Mind you the fact that Rhonda's commentary device didn't work was just met with a shrug by the staff.

A phone shot of the Eiffel Tower at night - with the light from the top captured as it hits low cloud

Along the Seine at night (phone photo)

We left the cruise for a bus tour (top of a double decker) of the inner Paris area.  This was ok, though a little tedious.  We left the bus at Opera station & walked into a heavy shower, but dashed into the metro & on were our way home.

We had not thought about dinner, so were very hungry by 11:15, but too tired to care too much.  So we bought a piece of the world's worst pizza and took it home to eat before bed.  Whew - a long day!