La Tour Eiffel

We were up at 4.30am as we had an early flight to Paris this morning. We're here for the weekend to celebrate Alan's birthday next week, and Charlotte is house sitting and looking after the boys.

Everything ran like clockwork - our flight was on time, and as soon as we came out of the airport, the bus arrived to take us to L'Opera. The next bit of good news was that our journey was free of charge - apparently Paris has been suffering with pollution so they're trying to reduce the amount of cars on the road, therefore offering free public transport.

We're staying at The Grand Hotel and have been upgraded to a junior suite, which is fantastic and has four balconies!

Anyway, once we'd unpacked we went for lunch and then walked miles! I wanted to see the Eiffel Tower light up as the sun went down, so we walked through Les Jardins de Tuileries, then along the bank of the Seine to Le Trocadéro where we joined lots of other people to watch the sunset. As soon as it started to go dark, the lights came on - it's so pretty to see.

We then went for a quick drink and it was nice to have a sit down and a warm before walking to the Champs Élysée to the Christmas market. The market is huge and is on both sides of the road, so we walked up one side and back down the other.

We finally got back to the hotel about 8.30pm and had a nice surprise - our room has been prepared for the evening, the curtains were drawn, lamps on, slippers on each side of the bed, and the bed covers turned down. And on the table there was an amazing birthday cake for Alan, together with a birthday card and a gift from the hotel! How nice is that?

As we've been out all day we decided to chill out in the room, shared a bottle of champagne and ate cake!

It's been a lovely day and I think we'll both sleep well. Night night!