Parlez-vous Francais?

Paris - city of love, romance and people pashing in the street, in parks and on public transport.

After checking in at our hotel, we boarded the tour bus once again for an orientation tour, and our first glimpses of all the Parisian sights – Le Tour Eiffel, L’Arc De Triomphe, Le Musee du Louvre, Le Cathedral Notre Dame, L’Avenue Champs Elysses and the beautiful River Seine which runs through the city. Dinner was in a French bistro (where else?) and our first real chance to chat to some of the people we would be spending the next month with. Who would become friends and who would we not get along with? Knowing me, there would be bound to be someone I didn’t get along with. As we started to chat, we were pleased to find that everyone seemed lovely and friendly and surprisingly, most of the tour are from Australia.


After a very yummy dinner (French pate, Mmmm) we all went on a romantical cruise on the Seine and saw some beautiful views of the city and lots of locals getting amorous by the river. We then had the opportunity to see Paris by night and were back at the Eiffel Tower to see its nightly light display before heading back to the hotel to recharge the batteries for a very busy next day.

Bright and early, we grabbed a quick (and very average) breakfast and headed into to city on the metro – we were staying on the outskirts of Paris, much to my disappointment. It was a free day so Gareth and I separated from the group, first stop was the top of the Arc de Triomphe. We made our way up the Champs Elysses, through the Tuileries Gardens to Place de la Corcorde, a giant square teeming with traffic and tourists snapping away.

The thing with traffic in Paris is that on roundabouts, you have right of way coming onto the roundabout, give way as you exit and there are no lanes or line markings. This makes for some very interesting manoeuvres as cars, bicycles, coach tours and mopeds all bustle through on their journey and was very entertaining to watch!

By this time we were rather hungry and tracked down a little restaurant where we put our newly acquired French skills to good use. The food was delicious. Real French Onion soup, some nice fish for G and a grilled Andoillette Troye (sausage) for me. While eating it, I began to be a little suspicious of the smoky flavour and interesting texture of the meat and sausage skin but thought better not to be thinking about it too much. At our lunch stop the next day I saw it again, this time with the English translation – tripe. Hello, Revolting! After a few moments of revulsion I decided to add it my list of firsts for this trip. In London I had my first Foie Gras experience which was amazing and I loved. Who knew fatty goose liver tasted so good? But back to Paris…

We spent the afternoon wandering and riding the metro back and forth between sights and areas on Paris. We climbed the tower of Sacre’ Coeur and explored the streets around Mont Marte, and ate in the Latin Quarter where we met a nice old French lady who we chatted with for a while. It gave me the chance to practise my French and she practised her English. Speaking is getting easier, it’s the listening that’s still tricky as they tend to speak very quickly. Baby steps.
I am very happy to say that Gareth loves Paris as much as I do and we’re both really looking forward to returning at the end of our tour and spending more time there. Paris is such a beautiful city, full of magic and wonderful things to see and do.

Next day it was “Au revoir” to Paris and a seven hour drive to Interlaken, Switzerland – the home of Lindt, milk maids and great big cow bells.



We had dinner in a local restaurant, Bebbi’s with an eccentric host where we gorged ourselves on cheese fondue, rosti, chicken and topped it off with chocolate fondue! Wow, activity food which you all know I love and a great taste. Bring me back to Switzerland anytime.

For our free day in Interlaken, we caught the cog railway up into the mountains, to Jungfrau to spend the day 3.6 kms above sea level. It was cold. Very cold. After a few absolutely gorgeous days in Paris where we were breaking out the T shirts and shorts, experiencing -6c (wind chill not included) at the top was a little bit of a shock to the system.

We tobogganed, threw snow balls and slid our way through an ice palace, stopping every now and then for coffees and to defrost by the heaters. Neither of us had gloves so after a few minutes out in the cold, our fingers were red and numb and felt like they were going to drop off!


Interlaken is the Swiss centre of adventure sports so once we came down the mountain, we both went Paragliding which was just amazing. After running off the side of a mountain 1.3kms up, we spent about 20 mins riding the thermal drafts and getting some amazing views of the town below. Surrounded by snow capped mountains, the town surrounds two huge, stunning lakes the most perfect crystal blue you can imagine. As you can see in these photos, the pilots we had have the most amazing workplace you could hope for.