Megan suggested a trip to Paris and I was really keen to go back to the fabulous city I visited nine years ago. We took the Eurostar on Friday night, just hours after saying "au revoir" to Mounia, my French-speaking Swiss sister. The Eurostar is a great way to travel - just turn up at the train station half an hour before the train leaves and less than three hours later you arrive at the Gare du Nord in Paris!

I admired the obelisk in Place de la Concorde and really like the Jardin des Tuilleries, which I hadn't seen last time, then it was already time for lunch! We stopped for a croque-monsieur in a Champs-Elysees café and then, clever me, I read about a free tour in Notre Dame at 2:30pm. So, in a detour from our carefully planned itinerary, we raced back to the Notre Dame. Unfortunately we didn't make it for the tour, but stayed to check out the cathedral anyway. Megan was determined that this would be the first "up" of many, and so she queued for nearly an hour while I cheekily went souvenir shopping and joined her when she got to the head of the queue! Four hundred steps later, we arrived at the top of the Notre Dame where I got up close and personal with the gargoyles. Notre Dame is of course home to Victor Hugo's Quasimodo and there was plenty of information about that. The views of Paris were awesome and definitely worth Megan's wait…!