On our last full day in France, we went back to Paris. In the morning, we went on a river cruise down the Seine, accompanied by commentary in five or so different languages including English, French, Chinese (Mandarin) and Japanese. I kept up with my tradition of taking photos of the underside of bridges as well as the wonders that could be seen on the banks of the Seine. The chaperones advised everyone to go to the loo on the boat as there wouldn’t be too many opportunities later, so we did. I saw the sign that said “To flush- close the lid and push” and from the words “close the lid” I instantly knew that it was a vacuum toilet.
So I did the unthinkable. I closed the lid, washed my hands, opened the door, covered my ears and kicked the button.
I unblocked my ears at the end and was glad to hear that I hadn’t blocked my ears for no good reason. I kicked myself all the way back to my seat, however, as I was ashamed at having given in to my old fear. I was going to flush away some used tissues I had in my pocket from my cold in order to make up for it, but unfortunately there was a queue each time so I would have to wait until the flight the next day.
After the cruise, we went back into the buses and were dropped off somewhere else in Paris. We got into our tour groups and walked around. We went to a souvenir shop before crossing the road to another road with a few food places and souvenir shops. We passed an Asian restaurant, and some people in my group insisted on having sushi, because it totally makes sense to go to France to eat Asian food! I just had my packed lunch, but I couldn’t be bothered peeling my orange because it was too messy. I thought it was just me being domestically challenged, but when I asked if anybody was good at peeling oranges, everybody said that they weren’t. (Later, when I returned home, I overheard some other people complaining about peeling oranges. I can’t explain how relieved this made me feel.)
After lunch, we met up again outside a souvenir shop at the end of the road. A few fire engines were now on the little road we were on, but we couldn’t see the fire so we assumed it was on the next street. When everyone was together, we went for a walk to the front of Notre Dame de Paris (we didn’t go in). We then set off for the Metro train so that we could take the train to the Eiffel Tower. Our train was a double-decker train, which fascinated us. Someone said, “Why take a double-decker bus when you can take a double-decker train?”
On the train, we passed a station called “Pont de l’Alma.” As Ashleigh was obsessed with the Llama song at this stage, I wanted to take a picture of the sign because “L’ALMA” looks a little bit like “LLAMA” and it wouldn’t surprise me if “l’Alma” was pronounced something like “lol-ma.” Unfortunately I forgot to turn off flash and the random person sitting across from me glared at me as she probably thought I’m one of those people who takes pictures of people without them noticing for the laughs. I don’t think I sounded very convincing when I said that I was taking a picture of the train station as there wasn’t much to take a picture of.
When we got off at the Eiffel Tower, one of the chaperones started talking about which way we had to go to get to the Eiffel Tower. Claire said, “I don’t think we’re going to miss it- it’s a 300m tall tower!” As expected, we reached the Eiffel Tower with little difficulty.
At the Eiffel Tower, we were given tickets. Each A4 sheet of paper had two tickets, so we were meant to go up in pairs. Unfortunately, in the massive queues on the tower, I lost my partner who was holding our tickets, but someone else with a ticket had lost their partner so we partnered up, hoping that our partners had partnered up with each other. If I remember correctly, my new partner’s original partner decided to go down early, so that solved the problem.
The queue was absolutely ridiculous, but at least there was a good view throughout it. At long last, we reached the summit, where we went onto the (enclosed) balcony and took pictures before joining the queue to go back down again. In the queue, when I looked behind me, a couple of people from our tour group were holding those special brushes with built-in toothpaste which allow you to brush your teeth anywhere. Actually, they weren’t just holding them, they were brushing their teeth with them! One of them remarked, “This is a strange place to brush our teeth!”
Around the small room at the top of the Eiffel Tower were flags from different countries with their distances from the Eiffel Tower. There was also a map showing the different floors of the Eiffel Tower in detail, including a toilet on the 7th floor. I pointed it out to Xanthe, and she asked, “How does it flush?”
Eventually, we got down to the second floor and queued up in a much shorter queue for the lift down to the ground floor. As we boarded the lift, a little panel that displayed weight. Karri commented on this, saying, “I refuse to believe that we all weigh 4.2 tons!” I suggested that it might be including the weight of all of the metal that the carriage is comprised of, and she said that that made sense.
At the bottom, we had ice-cream (I ordered in French again, and the person who served me helped me with my pronunciation) and wished Julia farewell as she would be setting off with her family for Italy and then Dubai. It was soon time for us to go back to the hotel. As we left, I saw Alex T in the next bus pulling a weird face with his mouth open and eyes wide, so I pulled the same weird face back at him, and we both started laughing. (When I got the chance, I said to him, “Nice bus face!”)
That night, we had a meeting about the journey home. Mr Hey said that the luggage limit was 30kg (the economy class allowance for Emirates), and we would have to pay if we went over that limit. The lady who organised our tour (at least the parts in France) was there, however, and she said, “It says here that their luggage limit is 15kg due to the instruments and it’s 30 Euros for every kilogram over!” I was a bit worried about that seeing as my luggage weighed somewhere around 18kg last time I checked, so as soon as I was able I moved all of my items that are light but take up a lot of space into my suitcase, moved all of my smaller, denser items into my hand luggage, threw out my old shoes (which is what my mum told me to do anyway) and my toiletries as I knew that I would get toothpaste and a toothbrush on the flight home. The bins outside were pretty full once everyone had lightened their loads.
Lights out was at 11pm, but at 5 to 11 Jess C and I could hear people talking really loudly down the corridor. At 11pm, Jonty and some other people started singing “Joshua fight de battle ob Jerico” at full volume. Nobody came to tell them off, which surprised me greatly. When the singers finally did get told off, that was no problem for them- they simply moved outside and, according to people who saw, were dancing really strangely.
It turned out that all of the teachers and chaperones were in the other building.
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