Paris

The fellow at the train station in Sarlat who reserved our train tickets to Antwerp and Amsterdam suggested that we go through Paris and take an extended connection between trains in order to visit Paris for 7 hours...sounded like a good suggestion, so that is how we booked it. We used the Metro to transfer from the TGV station to the Grands Lignes station which was fairly easy although we had to ask a local where track 2 was..."we're on it" she told us..."so, why does the sign there say 5-A?" we asked..."oh, it's the same thing" she replied. "Oh, yes, of course". Placed our packsacks into a locker and then took the city bus to the Eiffel tower. Upon arrival, we discovered 4 very long lines of people waiting to buy tickets. None of the lines were moving very quickly, and then beyond that were other long lines of people waiting to climb the stairs or take the elevator. Too long for us to wait, so we took some pics from the base. After that we walked back to la rue des Champs d'Elysees and up to the Arch de Triomphe. It was a hot afternoon (the hottest of our entire trip opined Michele several times on our walk back towards the train station), so we stopped a few times for refreshments...milkshakes, water, and best of all big tall beers. It was an unexpected diversion on our trip to Antwerp, but well worth the stop.