EUROPE 2013

May saw us taking off on a trip to France, Belgium, England, Italy, Switzerland and Germany.  You can read about this here.  There is a menu on the right hand side of the page so you can choose which country you would like to read about.

We started out from Comox airport very early to Vancouver on Central Mountain Air, on to Montreal with Air Canada and finally on to Paris again with Air Canada.  As you can see in the photo below the weather in Montreal wasn't much to write home about, dull and raining.  The plane was one of the new Boeing 777's, very spacious, quiet and comfortable. 

 

 Our 777 waiting for us Montreal Airport

You can see a larger version of any photograph by simply clicking the mouse once on the image. Another click outside the image returns you to the text   

We arrived at Charles De Gaulle airport early in the morning and took the train to the Gare Du Nord.  There we collected some railway tickets we had bought on-line some three months earlier, the earlier you buy the cheaper the tickets.  The system is easy when you know what to do at the ticket machine and we soon had our tickets for the journey to Brussels and Bruges the next morning.  We stayed at the same very good hostel we had used before, within easy walking distance from the station and just below the Sacre Coeur, which we could see just up the hill behind us.  We had the whole day ahead and we used the efficient Metro to get us close to the Eiffel Tower.  It was cold but not wet.  As one might expect for one of the major tourist attractions of Paris there were plenty of tourists around.  You can take an elevator or stairs to the first level.  The queue for the elevator was about 90 minutes long and the wait for a stairs ticket just 30 minutes, so we joined that queue.

Part of the queue for tickets

We puffed our way up to the second level and decided that was enough and, because of the crowds, we would forgo the elevator ride to the top.  The view from where we were was impressive enough and the wait for the top was very long.  

 The Sacre Coeur from the Eiffel Tower

Notre Dame

 The River Seine

The Champ de Mars

We found our way back to the hostel on the Metro and had a nice dinner nearby.  Early to bed because we had an early start again for the rail journey to Brussels and Bruges.