Last day in Paris

Bateaux Parisiens River Cruise
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The last day in Paris was strange.  Twice that day our tour leader would say that an unfortunate event that befell our tour group had never occurred before in his twenty years of running tours.  And I came down with a bad respiratory illness.  We started the day with a morning ride on the Seine River cruise which recapped all the famous sites we saw earlier.  We cruised past the Eiffel Tower, the many bridges on the Seine, the Louvre and Notre Dame Cathedral.  Most of the kids were outside on the deck, yelling when we went under bridges and doing normal teenager stuff.  The parents were mostly inside the cabin where it was warm.  Normally I'm cold-tolerant but the cold was starting to bother me, a clear sign I was coming down with something.

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After the river cruise, we marched over to the Eiffel Tower.  As we waited in line to board the elevator, we noted the apparently armed security patrol of French soldiers.  The weapons they carried didn't appear to be loaded, and they were very accomodating to a fault to the "asian" tourists who wanted to take pictures with them.  Our band group is predominately Asian-American but there is a huge cultural difference in our behavior compared to the "asian" tourists we were seeing.  Most of us got off on the second level but a few brave souls went to the top.  The view at the second level was great and the weather cooperated a little.  After doing the 360-degree on the second level, I got out of the cold and ate my first, and only, grilled ham and cheese sandwich, a staple French fast-food.

360 degrees of scenery from the Eiffel Tower
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The next stop was the Arch de Triomphe and shopping on the Champs Elysees. Since I wasn't feeling well, I opted to leave the tour group and make my way back to the hotel.  When I returned, my card key didn't work so I had to go to the desk and have it changed.  Little did I know there was more to this than just a bad card key.  I took a hot bath and rested, then I walked up to meet the tour group at their last sightseeing stop in Sacre Coeur.  I toured Sacre Coeur, enjoyed the live music (a reggae duo) on the stairs leading to the church.  Then I walked through the artist stalls in Place du Tetre but the crowds were overwhelming.  Unable to find the tour group, I returned to the hotel, stopping off at a patisserie to buy a chocolate torte.  As I walked back I saw the tour bus carrying the students returning to the hotel.  If I was observant, I would have noticed that the bus was the one used to carry the parents not the students.  Arriving at the hotel, I found the tour leader who filled me in on what I had missed.  First, a robber had managed to slip into the student's bus when it was parked for the Champs Elysees shopping.  Before the robber could exit the bus, it was locked up by the driver who then took a break.  When the two English bus drivers returned, the robber tried to make a break and even pulled a knife on them.  They were able to disarm and capture the robber and hold him until the police arrived.  Unfortunately the bus and the driver had to go to the police station to file the arrest complaint.  So the remaining bus and driver shuttled the students, then the parents back to the hotel.  And second, the hotel had overbooked and decided to give the single rooms from our tour group to an arriving group.  It took several hours for the communication between our London-based agency which booked our accomodations and the Mercure corporate office to resolve the matter.  So I got to sit for several hours in the lobby holding my chocolate torte waiting to be allowed back into my room.