Day one - London to Paris.
All Contiki Tours leaving from London leave from the same place - the Royal National Hotel (near Russell Square Station, if that's any help). The company has it's own basement-thing there, and I think you get a free night's accommodation there when you book a tour. The reason for this is fairly simple - they hold a meeting the night before so you know what's going on and you can meet the other people on the tour.
Also, the tour leaves at six am.
So on this particular day, I roll out of bed on receiving my wake-up call in the hotel, have a quick shower, make sure my stuff is packed and head downstairs to where everyone else is gathered to make sure none of the baggage is overweight. Eventually, all the baggage comes through (there were three tours leaving on this particular morning), and we all get on the bus, which after a time, eventually sets off. The crew for the tour then introduce themselves. We have Luca, the tour manager, Dom, the cook, and Andras the tour driver. Yay.
Anyway, that is when we arrive at the port of Dover to take the ferry over to Calais. That was also about the time I took these photos:
Well isn't that pretty.
We eventually disembarked at Calais, where we faced several more hours of driving before finally arriving in Paris.
Now, Paris is a really interesting city, with a lot of history behind it. It was originally settled by the Parisii tribe along the river Seine all the way back as far as 250 BC. Eventually it was conquered by the Romans - like so much of everything else in Europe - in 52 BC. After that, the city grew and grew, and with the collapse of the Roman Empire, eventually ended up being the capital of France. I'm still not exactly sure how that happened, but whatever.
It also has a curious history of never having been conquered (up to a certain point). When Attila the Hun tried to lay siege to the city, he was apparently stopped by Saint Genevieve who told everyone is Paris to pray, and this reportedly sent Attila to go and attack Orleans instead. To this day, Saint Genevieve is the patron saint of Paris. Furthermore, when the Vikings tried invading during the reign of Charles the Simple, he reportedly sent them away by giving them all his money the first time, something else which I've forgotten the next time they came back, and then when they came back the third time, he finally ended up giving them an area in the North of France - called Normandy to this day.
I say up to a certain point, because a whole lot later, after the reign of Napoleon, and into the 20th century, the Nazi's came along and conquered Paris. Shame, that.
Here are some pictures of Paris that I took:
There'd be more, but at that point my camera batteries ran out, so that was it for that day. That night I drank a bottle of cheap-ish Rosé before going to bed. Good times.
Tomorrow is Day 2, I guess. I might actually post that one before midnight.
