Vive la Paris! | 4th Grand Falls Scouts & Venturers

Jul 20th Vive la Paris!

Despite the short flight, I think just about everyone had a nap. Personally I only stayed awake long enough to find out that the coffee wasn’t free, lol! The Paris airport was about as insane as Pearson, but we all managed to work our way through and eventually find our tour guide Carl. It was pretty cool seeing the Scouts Canada sign at the Paris Airport!

Carl and our Bus driver Etienne (aka Steve) are both from Belgium. They picked up a local Parisian guide in the shadow of the Arc du Triumph… wow, still can’t believe we were there!! I won’t go into Paris too much as the pictures will tell a much better story, but suffice it to say it was incredible! Not sure who was more excited, the Scouts or the Scouters, but everyone was excitedly shouting, gasping, and frantically snapping pictures in every direction at once. I’m sure between us we took well over a thousand!

We enjoyed one brief stop at the Eiffel Tower so we could get a couple good pictures. Our Scout uniforms served as a giant flashing arrow screaming “HEY, WE’RE OBVIOUSLY TOURISTS AND LIKELY TOO POLITE TO TELL YOU TO GO AWAY” so the street vendors came a running! There are now a great deal of replica Eiffel Towers on our bus…

After an amazing tour of one of the most incredible cities on the planet we said goodbye to our Parisian guide and began our trip to Caen (pronounced “con” by the way). Due to driving regulations our awesome bus driver had to stop at a rest station for a mandatory 45min break. The rest stop served as a reminder that we are still fish out of water, but together we figured out our Euros, found a bank machine, and even found William some milk-free frozen treats. The allergy situation is not nearly as dire as we expected; most labels that contain milk or nuts put it in bold in the ingredients list. I continued my quest for a decent cup of coffee… in vain… apparently coffee that is dispensed from a vending machine into a plastic cup is about as tasty as it sounds :S

We’re now about 20min from Caen and have been thoroughly enjoying the incredible countryside of France. Carl went into great detail about to expect for tomorrow, and even summarized both World Wars… only about half of us were awake to hear it though, lol! Looking forward to supper and our laser tag adventure!