Two trips to the tower

After a French breaky delivered by an English woman in the common room of the hotel we headed off by foot to explore the delights of the town. First stop was the Musée d’Orsay. This place has some valuable works of art, housed in an old railway station and protected by armed undercover security guards. We all found something in here which we recognised and thus appreciated. Some items touched others more than some and some others more than none – thus is the nature of art in Paris.

It was then a quick saunter over to the Musée Rodin where we all got to have a look at the Thinker. Much to Dad’s surprise it did not start with an “S” and did not smell in the slightest. Isabel got to stand at the Gates of Hell (or in front of ... whatever) and Ro got to reacquaint herself with the Kisser.

After a bite of crepe’s, quiches and baguettes quaintly sitting on the side of a Rue we headed over to that tower thingy that everyone bangs on about. In 4 days time its Bastille Day here. This means that all the French go nuts over the fact that they’ve never won a war but they did manage to sink a Greenpeace ship and get away with it. Consequently they’re putting up stands and closing thoroughfares etc. Should be fun. The crowds around the tower were exactly as the guide books predicted; we waited an hour to get to the first two levels and decided not to wait for another 2 hours to get to the top. We did get to appreciate the splendour of the whole thing. Basically it’s a big Mechano kit construction – complete with pulleys, winches and shops. When we got up there we were faced with thousands of mini towers - oh the confusion. When we got down we were faced by a plethora of more replicas – this time thrust up our noses by unwelcome sales reps.

Bleeding (not really) but still replica-less we headed over to the river to catch a slow boat back to our Latin Quarter. Wandering back through the Isle St-Louis we discovered the Crème-de-la-Crème of Ice-Crème Rue’s. This was possibly the best ice cream ever had (although distant memories of Denmark stir some emotion in that arena). Going to extreme levels of naughtiness we headed back to the room to consume more vitals i.l.o the common room. If the Cleaners dob us in we could be facing detention....

After dinner 3 doors doors down, and full of bravado we headed into the underground to see the afore mentioned Mechano set under lights. This was an adventure worth many more words than a daily blog space can support...We encountrered many buskers on the moving trains. This is obviously an industry. Working Class Hero (Lennon/Green Day) was great. The rest was - shut up we’re over it. Whilst full of seemingly strange (possibly dangerous) characters the system runs well and we got to the tower intime to see it sparkle in some sort of Bastillely Day way which was awesome.

The whole area was packed with tourists and the same sellers still trying to push replicas of the tower up our noses. The difference was this time we could see them coming as they glowed in multicoloured splendour so we could easily dodge them in the dark. As we headed across the bridge thus towards the Palace du Challot, the entire horde of them started sprinting away from us. As it turns out all these hundreds of dudes (one may say - Jivein’ dudes - to remain PC) are pushing their wares illegally. So we had 2 cops pretending to be sheep dogs and hundreds of Dudes being sheep – but much faster than the dogs. In 10 minutes the cops had gone and it was business as normal. It was hilarious. The only change was that the tourists who had witnessed the show were now empowered to say “shove that up my nose again and I’ll call the cops”.

A similar midnight(ish) trip back via the Met and we are safely ensconced in our room.