The consensus is that I am too verbose, so we are writing this together in the hope of compression.

We have been tired and there has been so much to do we have had little time to update. We are now sitting in the outdoor section of the Refuge Albergue Orisson after having walked the first seven kilometer section of the Camino.

Now we really know what tired means.

Here is a photo of the Albergue across the road, and here is the view to our left. We are feeling pretty special right now, so are catching up on our updates as best we can.

Back in Paris, after lunch we began the six kilometre walk back towards our hotel, initially weaving through the Latin quarter where we were duly hounded at each of seemingly hundreds of restaurants and cafes on each side of the streets. My scam bracelet fully activated we enter none except the beautiful shop selling chocolate that drew us in the door with its odour.

We slowly make our way back to the Seine and head towards the Eiffel Tower along the bank. We go down to the boardwalk beside the river where all kinds of family festivities were happening. This walk is beautiful and the density of tourists has thinned.

I leave my ioneyes tag on a huge blackboard along with a message Pam 4 Mick 4 Eva.

Corny but we are in the city of love after all and the love of my life is beside me.

All sorts of things are happening around us, rock climbing for kids on the stone river bank walls, jungle gyms with kids swinging like Parisians monkeys, a skate pipe with athletic bare chested young men doing their best to impress and drawing a crowd.

When you return to sites from your childhood the world that seemed so large when young has often shrunk, the recesses where you travelled in imagination once so grand can seem commonplace and unremarkable.

Until I walked under the Eiffel Tower for the first time I did not realise that this phenomenon could work in reverse.

I have seen so many pictures of the Eiffel Tower, and it has appeared in so many movies, and to be honest it is dwarfed by more modern skyscrapers. Yet walking under it, between where its four lace legs grip the ground, I could not help but feel awestruck by this lattice of steel and hope.

We make our way across the Seine for the last time for today and climb the staircase of the Palais de Chaillot (which we will do many times over the next few days). Everywhere we walk we are asked if we would like to purchase mini Eiffel Tower replicas, guaranteed to break in your bag on the walk home.

My African Ju Ju bracelet deflects them all, I hear the ricochet of bullets in my mind each time.

PLL

Pam and Mick