The longest bus ride (2nd September)

It's a 6am start because we hadn't totally packed and we were also scared of missing our bus. Shona gets rather paranoid on travel days to make sure we have plenty of time to shower, get to the drop off point and of course eat breakfast (she'd be a hangry marvin without some food!) Today is our hideous bus ride. We leave at 8:15am bound for the the city of light - Paris. Our estimated arrival time is 9 - 9:30pm. That is 13 hours on a big blue bus - boring! It's not too bad because we snooze a bit, watch the DVDs that are being played (The long way round with Ewan McGregor and The Bourne Identity with Matt Damon and Rush Hour 3 with Jackie Chan). We have two day stops to drop off and pick up people at as well - Bordeaux and Tours. Some of you would LOVE Bordeaux, but as we are not red wine drinkers we figured the experience would be totally wasted on us. We also have various service stops which are basically truck stops to go toilet and get some food while the coaches are filled with petrol. One highlight has to be Stuart our Busabout guide. Every time we stop at a drop off point the guide has to go through the safety procedures. "Welcome on board. There are two roof hatches, pull the leaver and push them out. Every second window has hammers tap all four corners and push the glass out. There are two doors the front one we came in on and the one in the middle of the bus. Pull the red levers and push them out. The first aid kit is located in the roof rack and the fire extinguisher behind the drivers seat. If for some reason the guide can't phone for help, use the phone they have on them at all times and dial 112 the European emergency number." Yip, we've heard this speech a number of times now, but do appreciate that it is important to remind us. Anyway the highlight was that Stuart undertook this speech as if he was calling a horse race. He is originally from Melbourne and had the perfect accent to pull it off... so for once it was interesting to listen too! As that is the highlight of our day we can see this post is starting to make you sleepy. Not to worry we have four nights in Paris and we intend to make the most of them! Starting as soon as we arrive. After the 30 minute check in because Shona waited for Mike instead of listening to his advise to get in the front of the queue and let him bring the bags... It's drizzling and in our haste we forgot our raincoats and appropriate footwear, but - even slippery jandals don't stop us from getting to the base of the Eiffel Tower in time to catch a ride up. This is a very incredible structure and a pretty awe inspiring piece of engineering. The light effects at night add to the grandeur of it - topped by the fact that the first 5 minutes of every hour it sparkles rapidly and brilliantly. Shona loves the lights of "fairyland" so it was worth the trip for that factor alone. We went right to the top and Shona braved the cold wind to get some photos of the Siene river at night. Mike is scared of heights and could feel the tower moving (Shona had no idea what he was on about). We had about 45 minutes up the top when the staff told us they were closing for the night so unfortunately we had to catch the lift down to the bottom. Shona absolutely loved it and Mike thought that looking AT the tower is far more impressive than looking out FROM the tower. It was 11:40pm and we knew the tower would sparkle again at midnight (we've put a video up, so hopefully it works), so we wandered along the Siene and across a bridge where we stumbled upon the Lady Diana memorial. She died in Paris after the paparazzi chased her all those years ago. After the brilliant sparkling show we jumped back on the metro and navigated our way home. It was a 2pm bedtime, but totally worth it!