Birthday Balloons

To celebrate Tess's birthday we walked up to the second level of the Eiffel Tower then took the lift to the top where we enjoyed a celebratory glass of champagne (see extra).

When we had staggered down again we took a nostalgic stroll past the nearby hotel we stayed in on our honeymoon 40 years ago (it's metamorphosed from a humble two star with a clanks lift into a swanky 5 star in the intervening years!) then went out to the Christmas Village at La Defense, an area we'd not been to before.

On the au back we stopped off to see the festive display under the breathtaking dome of Galeries Lafayette.

To round off our nostalgic trip we had dinner at Bouillon Chartiers, the Paris institution, all brass fittings and huge mirrors that we also ate at 40 years ago, where the queues to get in still stretch down the street even on a Monday.