Lunch on the Seine

After arriving in Paris on the Eurostar we took a taxi to our reserved boat ride and lunch tour on the Seine River. Arriving somewhat early at Bateaux Parisiens, we walked up the steps to view the Eiffel Tower. Right at the base of the tower were concessions and I bought Sandy a cup of hot chocolate from two Sengalese pirates . The chocolate was three and one half Euros with another one fifty for whipped crème on top. That's about six dollars for a small hot chocolate, but it was cold and I'm not in Paris every day so I bought the drink. We soon boarded our cruise boat and headed down the river for sight seeing and lunch. Sandy had bought the tickets a couple months ago on the web , and we really didn't know what to expect. We were given menus with options for starters , entrees , and deserts. I opted out on the starters because I'm not much on potato soup or pickled prawns, but everyone else ate theirs and gave them a thumbs up. I ordered oven baked chicken and brussels sprouts. The chicken was ok , somewhat smoky flavored and Sandy ate my brussels sprouts. Since I'm a teetotaler for alcohol , the first wine offering in my glass was consumed by Sandy, as well as her own. The drinkers relished the first wine which was blackberry wine mixed with champagne. The rest of the meal was many rounds of rose wine and white wine, which my brother in law drank for me. The waiter must have taken me for a heavy wino because my glass was always empty! T

he final drink was a thimble sized cup of bitter coffee , which old Tim drank for me as well. The beauty of this tour was a living history of Paris and the architecture of Paris along the Seine, which is why Paris grew to be here  in the first place. We went by Royal Palaces, The Louvre, Notre Dame , The national Library, The Eiffel Tower, A replica Statue of Liberty given by American Citizens in Paris, and the Island with Cathedrals and palaces.Along the way we passed boat traffic and house boats that a lucky few can reside in. I expected to see Jason Bourne fly across the Pont de Neuf, but he was out of town that morning. The Pont de Neuf connects to the Ile de la Cite, which is the center of the city and where Paris actually began.An interesting note is that the Pont des Arts is a pedestrian bridge crossing the Seine  over to the Louvre, and became the traditional site for lovers to place padlocks on the chainlink guard rails . They would place locks with their initials painted on as a momento. Unfortunately there grew so many locks on the bridge that it became likely to collapse. Engineers estimated 45 tons of locks were on the railings when they replaced them with plywood panels in 2015. All too soon we hailed a cab to take us to the Gare du Nord to catch our London bound Eurostar. Our cabbie was a native Frenchman who spoke little English and crammed four of us in the back seat of his BMW. He spoke little and asked me if I was Buffalo Bill. How do you answer that? His blue tooth radio kept ringing and it was someone named Catherine that he kept hanging up on. I told him Catherine was going to be pissed , but he just shrugged. He was middle aged and could have been an assassin looking for Jason Bourne.Who Knows? We finally got back to the station and caught our train back to London. I don't know if our cabbie ever connected with Catherine.