Tuesday we woke early again. We ate left overs for breakfast and went out at sunrise for some more photos. This time at the bridge at Bir Hakiem near our apartment. The bridge has a sculpture of Joan of Arc overlooking the Seine.

We then made our way around the tower to join up with a hop-on-hop-bus. We hadn’t booked it, but I knew we could pay on the bus. We chose Big Bus. It has two bus lines and a boat ride up and down the Seine.

We braved the cold and sat on the top deck. And it was cold!

The red route took as past all the popular tourist attractions including the Eiffel Tower, Opéra Garnier, Louvre, Place Vendôme, Notre Dame, Musée D’orsay, Champs-Elysées, Arc de Triomphe, Grand Palais / Petit Palais, Trocadéro. We decided to hop off on the Champs Elysées. We took some photos of the Arc de Triomphe, braving the traffic in the middle of the road like all the other tourists. I wanted to buy my watch at Skagen and Jane did some perfume shopping. We had a coffee and Nutella crepe because we were freezing.

 

Back on board the bus. This particular bus had a English speaking guide who was quite entertaining.

We rode right around again and alighted at the Garnier Opera. We will visit this Grand Opera house later, but now Jane wanted to do some shopping at Galeries Lafayette. When first entered we were confronted with foods of every kind. It was hard to resist buying something. We caved and bought a couple of macarons. When is France…

 

We transferred to the Blue bus line. This line went through Montmarte, Sacre Coeur and Gare du Nord. As we’d already experienced Montmarte on our walking tour, we stayed on the bus on the lower deck out of the cold.

We transferred back to red line to go the boat terminal near the Eiffel Tower. We had a 40 minute wait in the cold for the next boat. On hindsight, it probably wasn’t worth it. The boat ride was nice enough, but quite hard to see things properly at night from inside the boat. The ride was from the Eiffel Tower to Notre-Dame and back taking about one hour. When we got back it was snowing. The first snow we’d seen in Paris.

We had dinner on the walk back to the apartment at Le Bistro de la tour – nothing special.

Back at the apartment we decided to wash out thermal underwear. We both have been wearing it for a few days now and needed a freshen up. It was hard to use the washing machine because all the instructions were it French (of course). We translated some words and pressed a few buttons and got it working. We soon realised it was only a washer – not a dryer. So we would have to find a laundromat tomorrow – we really need them.