7 July

Saturday 7 July 0700  Le Havre Port.

Paris, France               Currency – Euro

Boy, have I been waiting for this day as I am sure it will be one of the highlights and as it turned out is was a to be remembered but not for the reason I thought.

Le Havre lies at the mouth of the river Seine and is the gateway to Paris and northern France and is a town of much history and would be a great place to spend some time but I am off on a 2 hour bus trip to see PARIS.

The weather forecast was for a cloudy day.

The trip through the country was just as you would imagine with green pastures and lovely old cottages etc.  We travelled along the freeway and as it was Saturday the traffic was thin and most going out of town, we made really good time until……………….. just in sight of the Eiffel Tower we ran into a huge traffic jam and didn’t move for 1 hour, it seems that there was a marathon being run through the centre of the city.  One of the good things about moving very slowly is that there are a lot of photo opportunities of the same thing.  There is a small version of the Statue of Liberty sitting on a small island in front of a bridge on the outskirts of Paris, as you can see it is in front of the Eiffel Tower.

We eventually started moving and we drove down the tree-lined Champs-Elysees and past the Naval Academy where Napoleon trained as a naval cadet and we then stopped at a park and took heaps of pictures of the Eiffel Tower and of course the weather had turned cold and wet just as we left the bus.  We then travelled slowly through the old part of the city passing the Louvre Museum which was huge, the Place de l’Opera and the third obelisk that was taken from the site we saw in Egypt (now seen them all).  There were so many old buildings and a lot of history, the city was clean and easy to get around once the marathon finished.

 Lunch was next on the agenda and we went to a fashionable restaurant in the centre of the city, the meal was a light salad, followed by a chicken in  sauce and then a light desert and of course on the table were the decanters if red wine.  The women then cued up to use the toilets before moving on.  I think if anyone could invent a system where women did not have to cue would be a very rich one, I think most of our time spent on a tour would be ‘waiting’ time in various bathrooms in every country.

Our next stop was to pass by the Arc de Triomphe   which was commissioned by Napoleon to honour the French Army, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier lies as the base of the arch.

The Cathedral of Notre Dame is located on the central island, where Paris began.  Notre Dame dates from the 12^th century and the interior is surprisingly well lit for a large church which can accommodate 9,000 people at one time.  The stained glass not only serves as beautiful decoration but as a way of telling the hoy story for those who can not read.

We had an hour to walk around the church and then to walk back to the spot where the bus was waiting and I started to wander back by myself and started looking in some of the souvenir shops as I wandered in what I thought was the right direction.  WRONG. It seems that I managed to get lost and when I realised this I started to walk faster towards our designated spot but no matter how hard I tried I could not find the bus and I had taken note of the buildings close by and it was a belltower.  Oh no, you have no idea how many belltowers there are in the area I was walking and I was now officially late.  I tried talking to a couple of policemen and they were no help, it was now raining very heavily and I only had on a jacket and not a raincoat so I was dripping wet and very scared.  We do not take our passports off the ship as our passenger cruise card is accepted in almost all countries, so I only had about 100 euros and my credit card on me and a potential taxi bill of 300 euros to get be back to the port or if I missed the ship no passport to catch a plane to Dover.  

I was now over 30 minutes late and I knew that the bus would not be able to wait much longer as they too would miss the ship.  As you can imagine I had been praying very hard and started to walk in a different direction down another main road, taxis were not existent as it was raining and they were busy.  Anyway, I started walking down the road, resigned to the fact that I had to try and find a taxi driver who was willing to make a 4 hour round trip and I looked up and there was my bus driving down the road towards me.  I climbed on board, hugged by a number of the people on the bus, they were almost as distraught as I was, they hated the idea of leaving me but they had no choice.  I was soaked through and freezing to death but back on the bus.  Thank You God.

The remainder of the trip was wonderful, I have never been so glad to see a bus load of people in my life.  My nickname is now ‘Lucky’.   

I had a hot shower and went to bed and woke up in the morning with a runny nose.

I think just about all the passengers in my corridor were getting off in Dover  as there were suit cases outside of every cabin, 700 getting off and 800 getting on.  It seems the ship is 100 overbooked and they were offering passengers free trips for 2013 if they did not board or left early.