DAY 11 - ST-GERMAIN-EN-LAYE TO PARIS

We had been looking forward to this stretch for some time. We are staying for the rest of the week with our delightful elder daughter in St-Germain-en-Laye, so we'll be leaving our backpacks behind while we walk through Paris. We will be using public transport to get to the start of each day's walk. Except for today, of course. Today's stage started where yesterday's finished - at the front door.

Breakfast with our delightful older daughter outside Paris 

We set off after a late breakfast intending to follow the long-distance walking paths into Paris. However, we ended up becoming disillusioned when we missed the signage a couple of times, and when our route took us to gated communities where the roads were barred to non-residents.  So after following the GR2 as far as Bougival we ended up plotting our own path into Paris.

Leaving St-Germain-en-Laye, with the buildings of La Défense in thé background

This took us via Garthes to Saint-Cloud, where we first visited the cemetery.  It had an interesting section of World War I graves, including several men who died after the Armistice, in December 1918 and into 1919.

Among the war graves at Saint Cloud cemetery 

We then headed for the footbridge across the Seine. This was a wonderful way to enter Paris, with views of the Eiffel Tower beyond the Bois de Boulogne straight ahead of us, and glimpses of the golden dome of the Invalides and of Sacré Coeur basilica.

The footbridge at St-Cloud, heading towards the Boisde Boulogne and the Eiffel Tower 

Once across the Seine, we strolled through the Bois de Boulogne and down to the river by the statue of liberty. We were walking along the Allée des Cygnes, with the Eiffel Tower looming ever larger in front of us, when we fell victim to the bird poop scam. (Lots of accounts of it on Google - of course we're kicking ourselves for having fallen for it). The result was that in the confusion created by the supposed bird poo mess and our new good friends helping to clean it from our clothes, the thieves helped themselves to the money from my wallet (inside a zippered side pocket). We didn't notice until several hours later, when I next got my wallet out.

So when we walked the short distance on to the Eiffel Tower, via the Australian Embassy,  we were feeling quite contented, and took a ceremonial selfie to mark our arrival in Paris.

Ceremonial selfie at the Eiffel Tower. We look happy because we didn't realise we'd just been shamelessly robbed

After a bit of a delay while I took advantage of the available wifi to finish and post the blog post for yesterday, we strode on along the quais on the left bank until we reached the Quai St Michel. Here we ended today's walk and took the RER back to St-Germain-en-Laye.

Day:  11
Distance:  34.04km
Walking time:  6hrs 23mins
Elevation gain:  512 metres
Cumulative distance:  280.49 km