An uneventful trip to Paris and we arrived at Gare d'Austerlitz at about 11h45 to a sunny Paris day. We followed the bike paths along the Seine to Pont du Sully, crossed over the river and rode up Boulevard Henri IV to Rue Castex and our hotel, Hotel Castex (info@castexhotel.com). We took our bikes through into their little courtyard. Our room wasn't ready yet so we headed out on foot to find some lunch. As ever, we were lead by our noses to a local pizza joint, Pizza Momo, where we had ourselves two very nice pizzas.

Back at the hotel and we lugged our bags up the 4 floors (no lift!!) to our room - small but clean. We then set out to Centre Pompidou, the modern art museum - some incredible art, as well as some really wierd shit.

In bed and asleep by 21h30 - a REAL BED! WITH PILLOWS!!

Slept nice and late, and on our way to the nearest bike shop by 09h30 to find a bike-box. We were in luck - they had one, although it was HUGE! Then caught the metro to Blvd Sebastopol to our next bike shop address - no luck this time, although they said we should try again later ...

We walked on to Place de la Concorde, through the gardens and to the Louvre (an absolutely massive museum, you could spend a few days here). We started off by heading for the Mona Lisa, through the Italian and Spanish section. The Mona Lisa was surrounded by a huge crowd, so we didn't get the best view (best seen in a book, I think). We carried on and found our way to the Phonecian and Egyptian antiquities - lots of very old, very interesting stuff. Half of the really old stuff was closed for Friday, so we missed out on some of it (they rotate the sections open to the public).

By this time our feet and backs were killing us, so we moved on. We found the Decathlon sports store in Blvd du Madeleine to buy some clothes, and then caught the metro through to near the Eiffel Tower. What a view of the tower! We grabbed some expensive paninis that gave us the runs later, and settled on a park bench for a graze at about 13h30, then walked through under the Eiffel Tower. The queues were very long so we didn't go up (the only short queue was the one for the stairs up, no thanks!!)

It was starting to get pretty hot, so we decided to push on and walked along the Seine for a while, then up to the Champs Elyssees for the view of the Arc de Triomphe. We carried on down the Champs Elyssees doing some window shopping, then caught the metro across to Hotel de Ville, and walked across to the Notre Dame cathedral - another huge and impressive church. We soaked up the view for a while whilst resting our weary tourist bodies, grabbed a cooldrink and started walking back to that bike shop. Got there to find no box. Mmmph. We got the address for another bike shop though, and navigated the tricky maze of roads to find our way there - better luck this time, they had a box. We walked the box back to the hotel, about 30 minutes, and had very refreshing showers, and a bit of a lie down.

Supper time though, so we were up and dressed by 19h15 and out looking for a place to eat. We found a restaurant called Hippopotamus and got a balcony seat. We shared a tomato and mozzarella starter (big portion!), and Nicole had a vegetable bake while I had beef entrecote. Both were very generous portions, which didn't stop us from gorging ourselves on chocolate mousse, and trio of ice-creams, respectively. All washed down with a bottle of Chardonnay. 54eur later and we were feeling completely stuffed.

We walked back to the hotel and collapsed into bed like the gluttons we were.

Time to get packing again, and we carried our boxes and stuff down the four flights of stairs, and got the bikes all packed. The big box only required the front wheel to be removed. We taped the boxes up and had our other bags stored in the hotel office.

We settled our account and set off via the metro to northern Paris to see the Sacre Coeur and the Dali museum. The Dali museum was particularly interesting, you could even buy limited edition signed prints (from 660eur), and sculptures from about 16000eur!!

We wandered back down the hill and caught the metro across to the Louvre with the intention of finding a small supermarket so that we could self-assemble lunch. No such luck - an hour of wandering around the tourist traps and expensive clothing and jewellery houses produced no lunch. So we headed into the Tuileries and found nice sandwiches at a funfair foodstall and settled down onto a bench to eat.

We spent an hour people-watching, then took a slow walk along the Seine back to the hotel, via a brasserie for a beer each.

We met our taxi at the hotel at 17h00 and got our ride to the airport hotel (Les Relais Bleus). Not the greatest hotel in the world, they gave us a smoking room, which stank, and crappy pillows. Don't stay here! We went to a nearby pizza restaurant for supper. Nicole had a pizza, and I had a rather oily salad.

Up at the disturbing time of 04h45 so that we could be all packed and meet our airport shuttle at 05h15. We got through to the airport and had to wait in a queue until 06h00 when they decided to open customs, and then the world's slowest checkin process to get our luggage through. It all weighed in at 54kgs this time, 14 kg over, but they didn't seem to mind. We were on our plane on time, but the departure was delayed and we arrived in Zurich 15 minutes late.

A frantic rush through to the next check-in (lots of long queues) with no time for any duty-free shopping, and eventually we got onto our homeward flight, which was only delayed a few minutes.

Au revoir Europe!