Day 9

Paris Walking Tour & Night Train


   This morning we had several hours of free time.  My family (Petersons) chose to eat breakfast at a French cafe near our hostel.  The kids enjoyed crepes with Nutella.  We also washed our clothes at a laundromat and shoved everything back in our suitcases... not a fun way to spend our last morning in Paris!  Other families spent the morning more pleasantly, strolling through the city.

   At 1:00 some of our group members met at the Arc de Triomphe and and Cindy led them down the Champs Elysees.  A walking tour of the city with our professional guides began at 2:00.  We culminated the tour with a picnic in an enclosed garden area.  Some of us opted out of the picnic to enjoy wonderful French food at a nearby bistro.

Ken and Jake enjoying our last meal in Paris.

The unique stairwell in our Paris hostel.

Our Paris walking tour culminated outside the Louvre, formerly a Palace for the royal family.

    Finally, we said "Au Revoir" to Paris, got our luggage from the hostel and took the Metro to the Gare de Lyon train station. We boarded the Thello train for a 10 hour overnight ride to Milan, where we connected to another train to Florence.  On this high speed electric train we had sleeping cars, with six bunks to a room.  Accommodations were very tight and I didn't sleep, but most people slept a little.  We travelled through Switzerland and the Alps during the night, I wish I could have seen the mountains out the window!  We travelled through some really, really long tunnels, 20-30km in length!  I can't imagine what it took to dig those long tunnels through the mountains.

This is a screen shot from Google Maps on my iPhone as I tracked our progress through the Swiss Alps at 3:30 AM!  Our location is the blue dot near the center. While my train cabin mates slept, I laid awake, aware and sad that I couldn't see the beautiful mountains we passed through!