WOW. I'm referring of course to the photo above, where we finished the day at the Jules Verne restaurant in the Eiffel Tower. Magnificent meal, magnificent location and magnificent service. This place was incredible, we undertook the peak holiday experience and also one of my personal bucket list items. I'd love to come here again. 😄

Most of the day was fairly ordinary as it mostly involved travelling.

We started the day early in Castelnaudary. like many mornings, I walked to the local Boulangerie (French bakery) and ordered some croissants and pain u chocolate, which they had a different name for in this part of France and unfortunately I've forgotten it.

We ordered a Taxi to pick us up to go to the local train station for the 10:00am ride to Toulouse. Naturally, we were too early and waited at the station for nearly an hour.

We had an early lunch/morning tea in Toulouse at the train station and caught the 12:32pm train to Paris Montparnasse station. This was a bit of a stuff up. I ran ahead of Clare and Annie to hop onto the train and the girls didn't see which part of the train I got onto. They ended up down the end of the train and not in the section we reserved. After unpacking and sitting down, I phoned them up wondering where they were. It was getting late and they ran down the double decker train stairs (not easy with all the baggage we had) and Clare fell and twisted her ankle badly. My bad I guess. I should have made sure they saw which carriage to get onto.

The train journey was over 5 hours, long and a bit boring. Clare got a spray from the train staff for her foot and kept it raised for most of the journey.

We finally got into Montparnasse. It was a bit of a confusing station and I walked around looking for a taxi or bus or connecting metro line. We had too much luggage, which was a hassle and eventually we found a taxi stand and caught a taxi to our hotel which was in the Marais area near the Bastile.

In the Taxi and our first view of the Eiffel Tower. It's 5:28pm.

It's 5:53pm and we finally get through the traffic and see the Place de la Bastille, almost at the hotel.

We eventually got into our rooms at about 6:30pm. Our dinner reservation was for 7:30pm and we figured it would take about 30min to get there, so we ordered a taxi at the front desk. This meant we had just under 30 minutes to get unpacked, washed, freshened up and dressed appropriately. Ugh! It was hard for the girls, and not much better for me either. It was hot and we had to dress up.

We actually had a very quick drive to the Eiffel Tower, but the taxi had a lot of trouble finding a spot to pull over as they were working on cleaning the old girl up for next years Olympic games.

It's 7:03pm, plenty of time. This was just near where the taxi dropped us off, and as close as he could get.

Not a great pic, but all I had of the girls checking the place out; the security fencing can be clearly seen.

We had to walk to the far side (west/left side of pic) of the Tower and stood next to the fence outside the queue waiting to get in (it was the designated spot for the restaurant guests). The security guards saw us and asked if we were going to the Jules Verne restaurant, we showed them our passes and they opened the gate and let us in front of the queue where we went through the metal detectors. A guide then escorted us to the private lift entrance for the restaurant. The service was very good.

We booked early and managed to get the best table in the centre of the room with the best view of Paris.

The view of Paris outside our window, the Seine and the Basilica of Sacré Coeur de Montmartre in the centred horizon.

A pan around the room.

We had a fantastic meal the the service was exceptional.

I was very happy and contented. Great food, great location and fantastic company..

Annie got a little tipsy, she ordered just a glass of wine at a time, thinking she was being careful. Turned out to be 5 large glasses that added up to more than a bottle just by herself. Clare and I just shared one bottle of red between us. It was a very nice bottle too.

After the dinner, we ventured out onto the balcony for some scenic shots.

Time to leave. It was an exceptional night.