We caught a bus from Clermont-Ferrand to Paris yesterday – just over 400 Km which took six hours. I had booked what I thought were the best seats – right up the front with the best view but, not enough leg room for Mick apparently. Unfortunately, I have booked the same seats for our trip (to Nancy) later today.

Sadly the view was mostly the motorway. But, I enjoyed it.

What came as a big surprise to both of us was the size of the tollway as we came closer to Paris. There were 30 gateways.

We’d never seen anything of this scale before.In Australia, everything is managed via an e-tag!!

As we came closer to Paris Bercy, our destination for the evening, we got a glimpse of this famous French icon. And, that was as close as we came.

We only really stopped in Paris to break our trip to Nancy.

This was the view from our hotel window. We remember coming here years ago on a (hop on hop off) bus trip and seeing this sporting ground with its ‘live’ lawn walls that use very clever lawn mowers on a pulley system to mow the ‘walls’.

There were loads of fans lining up to attend the final basketball game of the year. We obviously had no idea what was going on, but it provided great ‘crowd watching’.

Our trip today is going to be shorter – just over 4 hours – so I hope Mick can last the distance with the cramped leg room.

As you can see from the map, we are making our way closer to the German border. We are interested to see how the French wine we can buy in this region changes from our previous experiences.

We will keep you posted.