Vive la France!

Ah Paris!

We love this place. It's amazing. Unlike London, the city is well laid out so it's very easy to find your way around here. The people are friendly and there are so many sites to see we'll need to stay here a long time to absorb all the details.

Today we took an OpenTour bus and travelled around to many sites including the Arc de Triomphe, the Tour Eiffel and the Louvre. Since our internet connection is almost depleted this evening, we'll save the details for a later blog.

Georg's background as a History minor has certainly come in handy and we're all benefitting from his background.

We went up the Arc de Triomphe and stood in awe looking over the magnificent city.

Later, at the base Georg told us the story of when his Dad was in the German Navy stationed off Cherbourg. He had a 5 day leave and went to Paris. During that time he and some friends went to a palm reader (mystic) and he was told that he would meet someone he loved in Paris. Later he was sitting on a bench in some park in Paris and heard someone playing a familiar tune from his homeland on a harmonica. He went to see who it was and it turned out to be his older brother Georg who had also been on leave from the eastern front. The two met by chance and as it turned out it was the last time they saw each other. Georg was later killed in the forest of Finland.

We all imagined Opa being in the same Arc de Triomphe as an 18 year old and here we were 70 years later. Isn't history - family or otherwise wonderful!

Tomorrow we will go to meet the lovely Mona Lisa. We've been told it can be a shock to see how small and apparently insignificant the picture is in real life. We'll let you know tomorrow.