Wednesday 30th June

We headed into Paris today. We are staying at Cergy which is about 40 minutes by train  North East of Paris towards Lille. Boys are enjoying their french brekky although we haven't had the need to take the Vegemite to the table yet. Croissants and Chocolate ones, Cereal, milk, hot chocolate , various meats like salamis and various cheeses are buffet style . I am trying to get the boys to speak to the staff in French. perhaps they will do it today.....
We drove to Pontoise station. The train line is SCNF - a bit like our city rail in Sydney. Well here we go. Got to the station and had to buy a ticket. you can buy a book of 10  day(we think) . So we tried to use the machine. No luck there couldnt get it to work. We went to the counter. I said "pa le vous Anglais" - Do you speak English ? She said NON - or no. Off to a great start. So we treid another machine for tickets. Got 1/2 way through the transaction and guess what. A Blackout....... All machines down and the ticket sellers computer down. So we waited... waited... waited...
The machines came up and another lady issuing tickets waved to us.

I said: Bonjour Madame. Hello. Deux  Un Billet pour Paris Nord S'il vous plait aller et retour. two tickets to paris nord station please return. and pointed to grahame and me and Kieran and Tristan. She said ahhh enfant - I said Oiu Yes Child. The train cost 27.50 Euro into the main station of Paris. Yes , we then said Merci Thank you. platform and she held a piece of paper up with no 14 on it. Merci Merci we said again. The train was a Regional train that we got one. Like the Wollongong train. Very comfortable indeed. So 40 minutes later the train arrived at paris Nord. This is where the Euro Star from England comes in as well as other countries trains and it was like Central Station in Sydney only 3 times bigger. We arrived on Platform 34 and headed with everyone to the middle and tried to find our way out. The ticket barriers are plastic panels that you cant squeeze through, but the ticket was ok and we found an information booth that does accommodation bookings and tours etc. We walked out the door to the right and found a street to stand on where the L'open Tour yellow bus came down. WE got a 3 day pass on the bus and boat called the Paris A la Carte package. $46 Euro per adult and 20 Euro per child. There goes EUR 136 in less than 5 minutes. At least the driver could speak English . The bus has 4 zones with different colours that do he streets of Metro Paris. You get off and on at the designated stops. So we did the yellow zone (montmartre ) to the Madeline building.  Then we decided to walk down towards the sienne riverplace .Straight down the street from Madeline  is the massive roundabout with the two beautiful fountains ( Place De La Concorde). Whats amazing is all the cobble stone streets everywhere. We watched all the cars busses and those poor tired men driving the bikes that carry people behind them. We then Crossed the street running rather fast to beat the traffic and headed into the park and waked up towards the Louvre. All the people in Paris sit down in chairs provided sunning themselves At the Louvre we queued  to see the Mona Lisa Painting which is the size of 2 x A4 exercise books together behind glass and the Wedding Party Painting which is massive and takes up the whole wall in the same room as the Mona Lisa, we saw the greek and Roman Statues . Our next stop was a boat ride on the Sienne River, right next to the Louvre. Out Tickets for the bus get us on the Batobus . So we ended up running to the boat that was already waiting and headed towards the Notre Dame Cathedral. We  went up and down the river and go off at the Garden palace. We walked towards the Champs Eleysees and caught the green bus along the Champs to the Arch De Triomphe and towards and around the Eiffel Tower. That is an amazing structure. We didnt get off there as we were heading back to the Railway station at Gare Du Nord. Unfortunately we missed our last bus and had to walk the streets to the Railway Station. We managed to get caught in the rain and kept walking but headed up towards the Moulin Rouge in Montmartre. I saw it in the distance. We then went right and tried our luck and found a lovely square and ended up catching a taxi from there to Gare Du Nord for Eur 5.50. We got the train back to Pontoise and had Pizza for dinner at 11pm.