France

Wednesday 4th October

The buffet breakfast the next morning was spectacular in its abundance. The must have been 40 different dishes, both Asian and western foods. Asher discovered a fondness of chipolatas and Eb had 3 or 4 generous helpings.

When we checking in (at the hotel of course), we were told that they had forgotten to reserve our bassinet, and did not have any available. After 2 hours up in the middle of the night before I was not relishing the thought of 12 1/2 hours of a grumpy sick Asher on my lap.

We shuttled over to the airport and made our way to the gate, with plenty of time to spare. Ash and the girls discovered the miles of travelators, much to their delight and the spent ages squealing over all of the stores full of kitsch Hello Kitty merchandise - maybe on the way back...

Simon was starting to get quite alarmed by the constant stream of airline officials milling around our gate - until a horde of Japanese in black T-shirts arrived, to much fanfare. We had noticed some at the table next to us at breakfast and surmised, all being big burly blokes, that they could be the national rugby team. They turned out to be the Japanese Judo team off to compete in Paris. A camera crew was there and they were given a grand formal farewell by the airline staff, including speeches and flowers. They were seated all around us and I have never seen such an amazing collection of cauliflower ears in all my life.

When we boarded the air hostesses were quite taken aback that we didn't have a bassinet and quickly set things right, giving us an extra seat between Simon and I. This worked well as we had much more room, and the big Judo team member seemed awfully relieved that he didn’t need to spend the flight being climbed all over by a raucous baby.

Asher was pretty good on the flight, considering he had a raging cold. The girls had a window seat but Savannah watched the same movie from the first flight - repeatedly. She can now claim to have seen 'RV' 8 times - thank god for Robin Williams, but I have fingers and toes crossed it's not still playing on the way back.

Our London based, Polish airhostess Jadewiga was brilliant. They were all so accommodating with the kids. Showered them with toys again and actually managed to get them doing French lessons on their screens.

The hostesses on our flight had suggested that it would be far easier to catch a taxi to our hotel in Paris, and not much more expensive than the train.

When we arrived we also asked at the information desk and were told 40Euro would cover it - the same price Jadewiga had suggested. With 5 suitcases and a pram we figured that an extra few dollars would be well worth it to miss the million flights of stairs in each Metro station.

It took a while to get a taxi big enough for all of us. The driver was quite chatty, and we managed well enough in our Franglish. It was great to the back in Paris, driving over the Seine and along the leafy side streets, traffic in a snarl and mad cyclists everywhere, but so pretty and green and cosmopolitan.

Though the marked tariff on the taxi sigh was in km's I noticed that we were being charged by time, but figured that seeing as we were in peak hour traffic it was fair enough. That was until the driver dropped us at the hotel, and over and above the 56 Euro on the meter he demanded an extra 20 for excess luggage and passengers. We respectfully declined and the lady from our Hotel kindly came to our rescue in French.

The hotel was a tough on the ratty side, but incredibly cheap and one street off of Blvd St Germein in central Paris, 2 minute walk from the Seine and the Notre Dame.

We dropped the bags, got changed and headed out for a walk, via a chat with some Aussies in the foyer. We seem to find Australians everywhere we go, and this trip was no exception already.

We wandered around for a while and picked up some Pizza and beer. We walked back to some gorgeous gardens we had seen to eat on the grass, but lo and behold in true Parisian style all of the grass was fenced off, for admiring only, so we were forced to go back to the stuffy hotel lounge to eat.

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