Oui, oui, Paris.

Some random building.

The drive from Lucerne to Paris was our longest, and involved driving virtually all day with a few service stops along the way. It was a relief to finally make it to the City of Light, where we were treated to a tour of the city led by our tour manager on the coach.

I’d been warned about Paris. I’d heard it was a dirty city, that the people were arrogant and would refuse to speak English, that the drivers were crazy, that I would hate the city. Only one of these proved to be true: the drivers ARE crazy.

Normally, a pedestrian crossing – especially one with a green light indicating you can cross – is somewhere you can safely cross the road. Pedestrians have right of way and cars are obliged to stop for you. In Paris, drivers don’t seem to care about pedestrian crossings or pedestrians, and will drive through with determination even when someone is crossing the road. Several times I was nearly run over by a Parisian driver when I had the nerve to step onto the road because the crosswalk light was green. How foolish of me.

However, the city was quite beautiful, with its carefully planned symmetry, tree-lined streets and pale stone buildings with wrought-iron balcony rails and touches of gold. It wasn’t dirty at all and had a definite sense of classiness throughout its streets.

Our tour included a visit to the top deck of the iconic Eiffel Tower in the evening. As a pre-booked tour group, we were able to skip to the front of the queue, which was one of the longest queues I’ve ever seen. We then had to take two elevators to the top, each with its own queue to board and with a lengthy wait attached.

At last I made it to the very top. I spent about five minutes wandering around before I realised I’d need to start lining up to get back down to the bottom of the tower in time for our coach back to the hotel.

A group of us got in line, and we waited. And waited. And waited. We waited for so long that we managed to miss the coach, which left for the hotel with three-quarters of Contiki-ers still somewhere up the Eiffel Tower. None of us had dawdled or taken our time or been lazy, but the place was stuffed with tourists on a Saturday evening and the queues were astronomical.

Those of us who got left behind gathered to formulate plans for getting back to our hotel. I decided to catch the metro back with four others, one of whom already had a ticket and two of whom spoke French. It was a real mission to find the entrance to the station, even armed with a map and after asking multiple locals for directions. At last, an American working in a French gift store was able to give us detailed directions and we found the station.

French trains were a surprise. They move incredibly quickly, so I almost fell over as the train pulled out of our first station. We raced along at slightly alarming speeds, successfully changed trains, and then navigated out of the metro stop closest to our hotel. It then took a fair while to orientate ourselves and find the hotel again, so when we finally staggered through its doors, we felt like cheering. Thankfully everyone made it back and expressed our disappointment that the coach had to leave while most of the group was still in queues up the Eiffel tower.

My goal of an early night had been smashed to smithereens once again. Touring the world is exhausting.