So after almost 6,400km’s on the road, we are almost at our final destination. Our last stop in Chateau Thierry located only 90km from Paris on the A4 Autoroute so it’s an easy drive into the city to the apartment we had booked near the Gare de East train station in the 10th assortment, a truly immigrant area of Paris. The drive into Paris went smoothly and we found the apartment in its small side street, which was blocked by bollards so we unloaded on the main road. While Kay and Emma looked after Isabella as we dropped the car off on the other side of the city near Paris suburb of La Defense.

Some guide books describe Paris as a place that you shouldn’t drive into, but to be honest its just another city with normal streets which are easy enough to navigate once you know the network of one way streets. Once you are there, there is no need for a car. Like the drive into the city, follow the directions into the centre of Paris, turn right at Hotel de Ville and follow the road up to our turn at Magenta Blvd and we were there. The drive to La Defense was a bit more fun, last time we dropped off the car we went around the edge of La Defense along the ring road, this time Kane wanted to drive straight through the centre. So off we went back down to the Seine, past Hotel De Ville, the Louvre, across the Place de La Concorde onto the Champs-Elysees Boulevard (Paris’s most famous street). This wide cobblestone road is the centre of celebrations within Paris and is one of the 12 roads that lead to the Arc De Triomphe, which is a great view as you make your way up the boulevard. The roundabout around the Arc De Triomphe is a bit different, with it being about 6/7 lanes wide, we’re not sure as there are no lines to follow and the cars entering have right of way. To top it off you have no insurance on the roundabout! So with dodging and weaving and a bit more dodging Kane guides the car around the Arc De Triomphe onto the Charles de Gaulle avenue direct to La Defense. It was fun!

This time when dropping off the car we decided to follow the instructions Peugeot sent us and this turned out to be the wrong decision. As you approach La Defense from central Paris you have two options, use the above ground circular ring road which we used last time or go straight ahead into the tunnel system underneath, the instructions said to go into the tunnel and take such and such exit. So we proceed into the tunnel at a moderate speed, see the first exit, nope the road isn’t listed on the exit sign, and then no more exits just an endless tunnel? So after driving for while underground we start to see exits for the autoroute to destinations outside of Paris, bugger! We exit at the next opportunity so we wouldn’t travel too far out of Paris and started to work our way back to La Defense. It took a while as we decided to follow the brown “tourist” signs, but in Paris they point to carparks so we found out, so after going round in circles in a strange part of Paris we just headed back into central Paris and started again. The second time we used the ring road and arrived at the Peugeot office in about ten minutes. After we explained our problem to the rep at Peugeot said the instructions were bad, your stuffed once you miss that first exit. We also mentioned the accident we had in Croatia, which she said unless there is major damage you don’t need to bother with the accident report, could have saved ourselves some time if we knew that! We even had trouble trying to find the scratch in the end.

Our apartment this time around was twice the size of the one we rented on our last visit in 2005 and it showed, a whooping 65 square metres, so much more room, to Isabella’s delight, but the view wasn’t as nice as we overlooked a street full of baby clothes stores. On our last visit we saw most of the major tourist sights so this time we were planning a bit more of a relaxed visit without the need to queue for the galleries and other major attractions (you should have seen the queue at the Eiffel Tower!). Most of this visit was getting to parts of Paris we hadn’t been too before (there always seems to be some of those no matter how many times you visit), including some of the Parks around the city to just wonder around, relax and enjoy the city at a lazy pace. From our apartment we walked to the squares of Republic and Bastille, one of the major sights of the French revolution, not far from Bastille is Paris’s oldest and one of the most perfect squares in the world “Place de Vosges”. A true square as it measures 140x140 metres and was built from 1605 to 1612 on an old tournament site, where King Henri II was wounded and died. It’s very popular with families, with lots of kids running around and it even has a sandpit for them to play in.

From Place de Vosges it’s a nice walk through the Maris area to the Hotel De Ville next to the Seine, along the way past fresh food markets, classic churches and typical Parisian buildings. From there you can visit the island of Il-Cite, once the political heart of Paris and home to the famous Notre Dame cathedral and other wonderful buildings. If you keep following the Seine along you will pass the famous Louvre gallery, we moved away from the Seine to visit the Pompidou centre and its industrial centric design, now a popular social area. Just North of the Louvre are many interesting streets containing, small squares, parks, greenhouses and even the odd large gothic church. While Place de Vosges attracted families and people relaxing, Chalet and De Halle’s area attracts the teenage crowd with lots of energy and noise, or maybe it was just that it was the weekend when we were there and the start of the school holidays.

This time in Paris we did to get to the top of Arc De Triomphe, which we didn’t manage to do on our last visit as we arrived just after it closed on our last night. It gives great views over central Paris, some people even say better than the Eiffel tower due to its location. From the top you get a great view straight down the Champs-Elysees in one direction with the fairest wheel (a new addition, as this was not there on our last visit) that was operating on Place de la Concorde to the huge arch of La Defense in the other direction, with the Eiffel Tower off to the right across the Seine.

In the Latin Quarter stands the huge Pantheon, built by King Louis XV in 1744 to hold the great intellectuals of France. In 1851 physicist Leon Foucault to demonstrated the rotation of the Earth by his experiment conducted in the Pantheon, by constructing the 67 metre Foucault pendulum beneath the central dome which was restored in 1995 and you can watch it sway with the Earths gravity.

At the opposite end of the street to the Pantheon are the Jardin de Luxembourg or the gardens of Luxembourg palace which today houses the French Senate and was a wonderful place to relax, it has a small lake where you can hire miniature sail boats, but you have to be careful of the ducks who seem to at random enjoy tackling the boats as they cross the lake, very funny to watch.

Our last day in Paris was a very wet day and what do you do when it rains, you go shopping. So with Isabella asleep in the stroller we went to the super expensive Lafayette shopping area and mainly did some window-shopping, as we have no room to carry anything home anyway.

Unfortunately our stay in Paris didn’t end the way we planned and we’re not talking about the weather, it was the hot water and central heating system in the apartment blowing up at 9pm at night, with water gushing everywhere onto the kitchen bench. (It was located in the kitchen). A plumber did come out at 1.30am that night to fix the leak but couldn’t get the heat going again, and yes we didn’t have any hot water even on the day we left as the different plumbers couldn’t get the part required!! Kane braved a very cold shower on the morning we left (He has swam in the Antarctic in his board shorts) and Lisa used hot water out of the kettle, Isabella was the lucky one as she got a nice warm bath in the sink with the kettle water.

Our bumpy ride home didn’t end there but I’ll leave that to the going home blog to follow…