PARIS

We've been here just over a week and are enjoying every minute. Our friends Mal and John were our first visitors here and together we discovered the BATOBUS. An excellent way to get around the city as it stops at all the main sights. Once you've purchased your ticket, you can get on and off as many times as you like (or just stay on for a rest) and also have a fantastic view of the city and all the bridges from the river. We still ended up walking for miles though!

The guidebooks say that the Seine "is the essential point of reference to the city - practically every building of note is either along the river bank or within a stone's throw of it". It's true and the river is still the centre of things - a whole section has been turned into a beach, the Paris Plage, - sand, blue parasols, blue stripy deck chairs and ice creams. In the warm evening everybody descends with their picnics to sit beside the river and to practise their Tango dancing.

Wandering around the streets, Paris is as quirky as ever - where else would you find a car with a boat fender on the front? 

And the Paris Arsenal Marina also has some 'original' paint schemes.

It's about 25 years since we first visited Paris and on that first trip we discovered The Oyster Bar, near the Place de Vosges. We were all delighted to find that it's still here and just as good as ever. 

The decor is now very modern with lots of plasma displays and the menus are presented on individual iPads for each diner.

Mal & John treated us to a fabulous lunch, thank you both.

Zena arrives today - looking forward to another week on the Batobus

We're in Paris - Yippee!

The trip from Moret-sur-Loing took us three days at a fairly leisurely pace. As we approached the city the banks of the Seine changed from millionaires' houses with amazing gardens (parks!) to the industrial quaysides of silos, power station and ever bigger barges. Where the River Marne joins the Seine we saw the biggest Chinese restaurant you can imagine. 

Takeaway Anyone?

From then on it was carefully counting the bridges to locate the lock into the Port de l'Arsenal. The lock itself was crazy - it was quite small and had the metro thundering above us, a lunatic playing a saxophone immediately beside us and a French boat insistently pushing in behind us leaving us uncomfortably close to the lock gate. Even with our two way intercom there was such a cacophony of noise we hadn't got a clue what was going on at either end of the boat.  Once in the marina, a strong wind picked up just as we were berthing, which made backing into our narrow berth very challenging. But, it was worth it. The view from our window includes the new opera house and the July Monument and the Place des Vosges is a short walk away - fantastic.