Day 9 – Paris to St Ives

Due to the wine consumed and the earliness of the hour we didn’t exactly spring out of bed but we managed to drag ourselves down for breakfast and get out of the hotel by 9. Trying to tick all of the boxes in the limited time available we headed straight up to Montmartre and hiked up the hill to take in the impressive Sacre Cour basilica. Then we headed straight back down again and back on to the Metro to see the cathedral of Notre Dame. From a distance, Notre Dame doesn’t really look particularly impressive, but when you are up close the many sculptures adorning the facade are really quite amazing. Even better are the intricate stained glass windows when seen from the inside with the light streaming through them.

With only a couple of hours left before we had to leave the city, we strode along the banks of the Seine to the magnificent Louvre gallery (or is it a museum?). We entered through the glass pyramid made famous by that awful Dan Brown nonsense and after battling with some broken ticket machines typical of the French efficiency we had experienced at the Eiffel Tower we got in and raced round a few rooms. Naturally, we sought out the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo as well as a few rooms of amazing ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, enormous Italian paintings, and Egyptian artefacts.

At 3.00 we caught the Metro back to Port Orleans and, after stopping at a patisserie to flex our collective linguistic muscles and order sandwiches and cakes, we go the car from its multi-storey and pointed the nose at Calais.

An uneventful 3 hour drive on smooth roads later, we pulled up at Carrefour to fill every nook and cranny of the Daimler with wine and cheese – it was so loaded up that the headlights were clearly pointing skyward and the rear suspension hit its bump-stops over the fist sleeping policeman outside the supermarket.

We managed to blag our way onto an earlier ferry than we had booked and headed back to Dover. Despite the water being as calm as a mill-pond (although it was raining), Ian won the prize for the feeblest voyage ever as he turned a nasty shade of green and made Si stop the car just outside the ferry terminal so he could turn the harbour water a nasty shade of vomit.

Two hours later we pulled up outside the house, knackered but pleased to be home. Thinking how annoying it would be to lose the 80 bottles of wine and 10 cheeses we had hauled home, we made a final Herculean effort to unload the car before going to bed.

The final day's pictures are to be found here.

So there it is, 3200.5 miles, 135.2 gallons of petrol and 10 days later we are back where we started.

Day 8 – Geneva to Paris

We jumped out of our (surprisingly comfortable) Suitehotel beds at the usual 7.00 and sped into Geneva in the Daimler to pick up some breakfast at a bakery. After we had filled up on cakes and coffee we wandered round for a couple of hours and found ourselves thoroughly under-whelmed by the city. It is not particularly beautiful, especially after Florence and Milan, and doesn’t really seem to have a sense of identity or any real buzz. We took another look at the big fountain and got back in the car to pound up the motorways to Paris.

After a smooth – and highly tolled – drive up to Paris, we checked ourselves into the Hotel Orleans and the Duchess into a local car-park. We went straight out to see the sights and got the Metro across town to the Arc De Triomphe and Champs Elysses. We couldn’t get right under the arch as veterans were celebrating some of the great French military victories of the past.

We wandered around the corner and along the banks of the Seine to the Eiffel Tower and after bypassing the trap of an official looking gentleman telling us the tower closed at six, queued up for half an hour to gain access to the second floor viewing platforms. The system at the tower is clearly absurd as we then had to queue for another half an hour and buy a second ticket to get the lift to the top. It was worth the wait though as the views across Paris in the sunset were superb. See photos here.

After a similarly long wait to get back down to the ground, we consulted the map and decided it was a short walk over to the St Germain district for some supper. After walking for well over an hour, we finally arrived in the Latin Quarter absolutely starving and sat down at the first place that looked half decent. Luckily, it was half decent (the wine especially) and we had a good meal. As it was our last night, we decided to go back to the Port Orleans area where we were staying for another bottle of wine. Splendid.