July 1

July 1st (sunny, warm)
Up early this morning excited about our adventures in Paris. We drove to Fosse to park and take the train in to Paris. The ticket was for the train, bus and subway. I thought about my knee and the fact I really could not walk so we took one of those double-decker topless tour buses throughout Paris. It turned out to be a great decision and a fantastic way to see this marvelous city. A fact we found quite interesting was of the 60 million tourists in a country of 60 million inhabitants, 25 million of those visitors go through Paris.
Being a Sunday, it was great for the bus at the beginning of the day, however towards the evening, traffic volumes dramatically increased as everybody was out on parade. We did the 2 ½ hour bus tour twice, getting on and off and using the subway to see sights that the bus tour did not cover, and thoroughly enjoyed every minute looking down at the excitement below. Paris is a very cosmopolitan and exciting city.
For the first time, George and I ate lunch at one of the restaurants along the boulevard people-gazing and enjoying the diversity. He took over 600 pictures during the last couple of days. Amazing amount of weddings today – especially couples from Japan. We found a huge internet café with over 100 stations where we sent off changes to our itinerary for our first couple of stops in Germany.
After a perfect day of sightseeing, we found our way back to Fosse and our van which was still safely ensconced where we left it. We have been alarming her lately with the portable alarm that George brought along. Also, it was a good idea to leave the computer with the campground manager today so that George did not have to carry it all day.
Because our tour bus ticket was for two consecutive days, (mandatory), we were able to give our tickets to a lovely Dutch family with four children who were planning to go into Paris tomorrow. With four tickets from another camper as well, they will save 88 E’s altogether and were very thankful.