Day 11 – Paris - Monday, January 13th 2014: Carey Taylor & Christian Rigert

Today was our last day in Paris and is the first day we’ve had the entire day free. A free day means no guided tours or officially planned events. We left the hotel at around 8:30am in the morning and boarded a subway train and started our day by heading to the Louvre Museum.  We arrived at around 10 and we organised to leave at around 12, giving us two hours to admire all the art contained within its walls.

After leaving the Louvre we made our way to the Cathedral of Notre Dame and found ourselves some lunch in the streets around the cathedral. We all met up in front of the ‘Christmas tree’, separated into groups and set off for other destinations. I went with Mr Scritchley and we went to the catacombs. Unfortunately, our journey was pointless because the catacombs were closed when we arrived. So we got back onto the subway and headed to the Eiffel Tower to meet up with the other group.

We arrived at the Eiffel Tower and discovered that the top floor of the tower was closed for renovations. The highest we could go was the 2^nd tier. From the 2^nd tier we could observe a protest happening down at the foot of the tower. Taxi drivers were egging each other for reasons unknown to us. We think that the taxi drivers that work for registered companies were protesting against taxi drivers who work independently because they offer cheaper fares…. So basically the taxi drivers were angry because they couldn’t rip people off. We left the Eiffel Tower at around 4:30 and got back on the subway line to get back to the hostel.

We got back to the hostel at around 5:30 and we ran into a bit of a dilemma. Sebastien didn’t arrive until later and he had the room key. We had to get the spare room key from the front desk, but we had to return it as soon as we retrieved the original. And for the rest of the night, we stayed in the hostel and played pool for most of the evening.

Carey Taylor and Christian Rigert

Yr 10 Students