New City

It just so happened that the theme of the day was New. Not too hard when I'd be arriving in a brand new city that day. I've tried before to get to Paris, but it never quite worked out, so this time I was determined to visit the city I'd heard so much about. I'd promised my Granny I would visit Paris, and so just a few months after her death I am finally fulfilling that promise. I reckon she's up there smiling down watching our adventures and incompetent French with a spark in her eye as she remembers the good times she had here.

Although it promised to be a fairly boring day - coach from Oxford to Luton, flight to Paris, arrive in the late evening, it ended up being a little more eventful. Five minutes into our journey, before we were even out of Oxford, the coach was declared to be broken, and a mechanic had to come and fix the door. Eventually they got it going and we set off. All was fine until we were almost at Luton. There had been some (unprofessionally frank) conversations between the driver and the depot over the coach phone (as in the one that projects through the coach) about the situation, including phrases like 'yes, he was in the wrong, you were right', and eventually (after some private calls at the next stop) it was decided the coach was unsafe to be driven. So we all piled off and into taxis that were ordered for us. There was some confusion as the drivers and the coach driver and the respective depots disagreed about where we were meant to be taken, ending with our driver deciding to ignore all other instructions and use his common sense to drop us right off at the airport.

After that it was fairly dull. Airport check-in, food, flight, landing, bus, collected key, explored our host apartment (friend's of my sister) and wandered the area looking for dinner. We settled on Italian since we could understand the menu. Then a quick walk down the street to admire the Arc de Triomphe and it was time for bed.