Back to Paris

The next day, instead of going to Disney Studios with the others, Banana and I headed back into the city, intent on hiring bikes and seeing the sites that way. It was mad fun! The scariest moment was probably early on, whilst I was still building up a bit of confidence doing something that I hadn't done any time in the last decade. Paris has a lot of dedicated bike lanes, but as we approached the Louvre, that dedicated bike lane became a shared lane with buses and taxis. Hot fun. After that though, we cruised along through the park (until getting into trouble for riding there by some random guy with a whistle), and up towards the Champs Elysees and Arc de Triomphe. We got some great photos, and even some entertainment when we stopped to have a look at the map, and I dropped the bike (admittedly it was very heavy at the front, therefore not evenly weighted), and not only made some noise, but ripped the map and spilled the contents of my bag onto the pavement (think camera, mobile phone etc - all fun to drop). I'm a class act.

We then made our way through some of the back streets, along to the Paris Opera House. Next time, I'm going in! Finally, we headed back to the main tourist track, returned our bikes, and had an impromptu picnic on the grass, before heading back to cold England.