Paris. tours, artists and flower patches

Like anyone else arriving in a new place, we often take a tour. Usually it is the hop on/hop off tour such as we took in Marseilles. There are, of course, much bigger and more expensive tours but with a very little French, a degree of cunning and a willingness to take a chance, you can save yourself significant sums by putting your own tour together using public transport. Let me give you an example with a conducted tour to Versailles.

A conducted tour which is little more than an arranged bus and your admission fees will cost around 50 euros and give you about two hours at the site. Making your own arrangements will probably cost about half that and, more to the point, you will not be under the control of someone else as to how long you can stay. You can visit the palace and if you are on your own you will have plenty of time to wander around the very attractive town.

The RER train leaves from various stations in central Paris every few minutes and arrives at downtown Versailles half and hour later. From the station it is a five minute walk to the entrance of the palace.

We spoke to our dear neighbour today who assures us that the temperatures we are experiencing are usually typical of June rather than April. And whilst Parisiens are rejoicing after a long and very hard winter we are finding it a trifle warm. An American friend who arrived only yesterday told us that the flowers and trees are much further advanced than those in New Jersey.

We went up to the Butte this morning for a coffee as it was a working day for both of us.

A waiter at work

We had coffee and chatted with the various artists who now recognise us as regulars and are prepared to spend a few minutes joking about business. We sit on the shady side of the Square and watch our "friends" at work. The best of them have great lines of patter to get the tourists to pose for paintings, caricatures or silhouettes.

An "Artist" at work

Walking down the steps back to our flat, we noticed one of those little bright spots of flowers that seem to be a feature of this particular area of Paris.

A corner garden