Mo and Chris’ Blog (written Tuesday, posting late – sorry):

Sunday, the three of us (Chris, Greg and I) decided to tour the Latin Quarter and Pantheon and then have dinner in Paris. Brianna was away on her week long Outward Bound trip in England and we wanted to see a new area of Paris.

On our way down there Greg got a text from a Peterborough family friend who said she was in Paris for the day and wanted to see us! So we told her where to meet us and she was at the Metro stop in Paris waiting for us when we got there!! We took the 2 girls to lunch before they were to meet up with 2 more friends.

The 4 University girls wanted to go see Montmartre and Sacre Coeur (Cathedral overlooking the city) which Greg knows well now, so they asked him to tour them around.  He took them by train and then they ended the tour in La Defense 3 hours later (and we were just catching a train from there ourselves, after our tour of Le Marais).

While he had been touring the girls around Montmartre, Chris and I rented bicycles for a total of 3 Euros and rode all around an area of Paris we didn’t know at all (Le Marais – Jewish area). We stopped at parks and tourist spots and rode little narrow streets amongst cars and mopeds with many other bikers. We came across a horse show in an old military courtyard, opera singers in the streets, and Victor Hugo’s house (wrote Les Miserables) by a beautiful palace courtyard (now a park). The colourful restaurant is the OLDEST restaurant in Paris! One man in the street was doing a solo puppet show in French. All of it adds to the atmosphere and we can still hardly believe we are here! So lovely!!

Anywhere in Paris you can put your credit card in a bicycle rental machine so that it charges you next to nothing for the whole day of bicycle use but it can take 100 Euros if you don’t return the bike. And then you can take and return a bike for 24 hours from all these different depots. It gives you a code and you use it for the day as you lock and unlock bikes from wherever you want (they are good bikes and they are everywhere!). I wish it was as easy to find a washroom!!   Anyway, all around, it was a relaxing ‘touring’ day!

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