Paris - November 4,5,6,7,8,9 2006

Paris – what can you say. The best city in the world in both Samantha and my opinion. We just love Paris and could happily live there if we could speak the language and get a decent job!

Alas, at this stage it's unlikely that we will be moving to Paris in the near future, so we will have to make do with visits to this wonderful city as often as we can.

Everyone is different and everyone likes different things, but to us, Paris is the most beautiful city in the world. The city and people have loads of style. The pace is quick but not frenetic, unlike London....not that quick is necessarily bad though. The food in Paris is great. The people are friendly. The shopping is interesting, even for me.

I don’t think there are enough superlatives to add to describe Paris, suffice to say, it’s brilliant, and beautiful.

On this, our second visit we ventured around to the usual places, Eiffel Tower – day and night. Arc de Triomphe, which again was cool and well worth a visit. The climb to the top is not overly difficult through a superb spiralled starcase and the views are phenomenal. This time we visited at night and took a few pictures, well worth it as you initially walk up the champs elysee and then look down upon it from the top of the arch. Spectacular!

We visited the Louvre several times…so, we have seen far more than we had previously. We visited the Conciergerie again, where Marie Antoinette was imprisoned and next door, the breathtakingly beautiful church, St Chappelle. The colours in here are amazing.

We again saw the two other brilliantly constructed churches, Sacre Couer and Notre Dame. We even saw the start of a Sunday service at Notre Dame which featured beautiful singing.

We walked around, as always, especially down the River Seine which never ceases to amaze. There are some amazing bridges and vistas to enjoy.

We also walked through a series of covered walkways that are very old and stylish, which was pretty cool.

We saw loads more than our first trip and we are still keen to head back again, which we are doing in April.

It’s a great city, so get out there and see it. Now!

Back to Newcastle, then Durham.

And that was the European Tour for Dave and Samantha. Eventful, fun and a brilliant experience...one that we will never forget.

Rennes - November 1,2,3 2006

Rennes is a cool place that we didn’t have any great expectations for. We had stopped very briefly here for a few minutes before we caught the bus to Mont St Michel but had only seen the train station area really....never the highlght of any town, although, to be fair, this area of Rennes wasn't so bad, all in all.

When we returned, we had planned to really just eat and sleep here as we had a day trip planned for St Malo, on the coast in Brittany. However, Rennes is a very cool place with the best kids merry go rounds we’ve ever seen.

The merry go rounds have great interactive things that kids can climb on board, eg rockets that move up and down, dinosaurs, all sorts of cool things! Anyway, they were cool., although maybe you have to see them for yourself.

Rennes also has some really cool buildings…nothing like Australia, let me say that.

We really liked Rennes and would definitely go back there as the town had a really nice feel to it and some good restaurants and shops too.

The day trip we took to St Malo by train was also very interesting.

St Malo is the starting point of a round the world yacht race, plus, various English boats arrive here from the home of the great unwashed.

It's a walled city by the coast and features some very cool streets to walk through and some fabulous buildings.

We had a good day in St Malo and being that we like to enjoy local food as much as possible, Samantha had a local pancake…..mmmm, i'm told...I wouldn't know as I didn't get any!

Rennes was the final regional town before we ventured to Paris and overall, a well cool place that we'd be happy to revisit at some stage down the track.