Barnham to Paris 2023 – Day 8 – Last Day in Paris
it’s our third day in Paris and it’s been quite a good one. We had a fairly last morning and just wandered into the local town for a coffee and a bit of grocery shopping. Then this afternoon we headed back into Paris for a boat tour on the Seine, which was actually rather good. I’m not going to lie – I slept for at least 20 minutes of the 1 hour guided tour, but he host was very good, fluently switching from French to English throughout his presentation and having some good humour thrown in.
After the tour it was back to the metro and on to a cool place for dinner. An only mail centre that had been converted into a swanky street food experience. I’m still not 100% sure what I even had to eat but it was tasty (if a bit soggy) and definitely a good family experience.
I wore my new shorts (long story) and they were very comfortable. The only down side was that I didn’t think to switch my wallet to them, meaning we’ll be heading home with an unused ticket for the Paris Metro system. Oops.
Apart from a bit of fun finally re-arranging our equipment into some kind of order for pannier packing, and watching the final episode of season one of “Happy Valley”, we had a fairly chilled day which was nice.
As we start to consider gettting back on the bikes for the return leg of our Journey, I’m just grateful that I’m finally starting to feel a little less exhausted. I honestly have no idea how I managed to keep going over the first few days of our journey and I’ve suffered for it these last few days as I have tried to recover but found even walking painful and constantly had to fight the urge to sleep.
My plan is to take the next stages of the journey slowly. There are still some big days of riding ahead, but I’m sure we will be fine if we pace ourselves. I’ve actually been really pleasantly surprised by how well a Maisey has coped with the riding, to say that she honestly didn’t want to do the bike bit at all.
Anyway, for now, we say goodbye to Paris and hello to saddles and open roads for another few days.
Keep watching for further journey updates.