After casual informal meetings around the hotel bar on Saturday evening, the tour group is starting to assemble.
On a fine crisp Sunday morning the touring group left the Mercure Paris Opera Grand Mariner Hotel for a four hour Paris sightseeing trip which is the first activity of the trip.
Our guide was Carsten. The paperwork from the agency said her name was Carsten, but Carsten was definitely male.
The traffic was very light for Paris as it is election day and also it is Sunday and everybody was at home sleeping according to our guide, Carsten. The first stop was at a quay along the Seine next to the Eiffel Tower. We had an hour long river cruise with multi lingual commentary.
Outside the presidential palace there were three TV news teams; but, outside an opposition leader's office there were about twenty TV crews.