Shop and Flop!

Well, after a veeeery long couple of days travelling from Australia to Paris, then spending the day sightseeing before FINALLY being able to check into our hotel (sooo love it), then out to dinner - followed by a very heavy sleep that night, we awoke excited to explore the city!!!

We got dressed and went to the stunning restaurant downstairs for our buffet breakfast and were assaulted with the most amazing array of food choices - pretty much anything you wanted, they had it! We hadnt realised until we got there that we were STARVING!!! And so we ate accordingly....

Next stop SHOULD have been Galleries Lafayette to get mum a warm coat and boots - buuuut no, mum needed a "little rest" after such a big breakfast, and not to mention a couple of long flights where she didnt really sleep (unlike drugged-up me :-) hee hee). We went back up to our room and while mum slept, I wrote the last blog - she slept for over 2 hours! Poor, tired mummy!

This posed a problem - we had to be at the tour place at 6pm for our tour (more on that later), so had to find her things in just 3 hours - in the most enourmous and incredible department store I have ever seen!! We walked over to Galleries Lafayette, and again, looked like total tourists - mouths wide open, eyes popping out of our heads, looking left, right up and down. What an amazing place. Like many things here in Paris, it is just so gramde, so opulent - and we were in love!!!!

We looked around one level at various things, then went up the escalators, and would you believe it, there was a Moet & Chandon bar right at the top!!! I thought I would lose mum for the rest of the day! Of course we did partake in one glass - it would be rude not to right? Ahem, anyway...

If you think I dont look as happy as I should, you're right! My neck was spasming so looking left, right, up, down was painful (but you cant help it) so not only was I in  pain, I had had 4 panadene forte - and was drinking champagne!

So mum bought a lovely woolen trenchcoat and some lovely black leather boots and we high-tailed it back to the hotel (via the bottle shop for some French champagne of course) to get ready for our tour.

The tour was this - dinner at the Eiffel tower, then a cruise on the Seine, followed by a show at the Moullin Rouge. How awesome is that?!?!?

Dinner was superb - the view amazing - OMG the Eiffel tower is gigantic! Standing under it you are totally overwhelmed by its sheer size (dont get any rude ideas there!). We were told there had been such an unusual amount of snow lately, and that it has melted, making the Seine water levels running very high - meaning the boats cant fit under the bridges. This meant we may not be able to go on the cruise after all. In the end, we were lucky and were able to go - but blimey that roof came so close to scraping the underneath of some of the bridges I ducked for cover! The views from the river at night were stunning, and it was really really lovely.

Problem was, mum and I couldnt keep our eyes open - where are the matchsticks when you need them?!?!? We discussed the fact that we were to see the 11:30pm show and wouldnt be back at our hotel until about 2am - and had another tour booked for early the next day, meaning we would only get about 3-4 hours sleep. So, we piked! We caught a cab back to the hotel after the cruise and skipped the Moullin Rouge - hope to get there one night this week. We got back to the hotel and I tell you we absolutely flopped! Neither of us had the energy to have a shower or even wash off our make-up, it was straight to bed and Im pretty sure we were both asleep before we even lay our head down!!!

Ahhh but it was worth it - tomorrow is our full day tour out to Reims (pronounced Rhm - difficult to say) for the tours of the champagne vinyards  - including Moet & Chandon!!

Im sure we both dreamed about champagne that night ....