The radioman family 2011 European Holiday. (pic heavy)

We discovered here that ducks love Cheerios, they even fight over them:-

 

We then headed back to camp, were we chilled for a couple of hrs, had cheese & ham pasta for tea & french bread. Then we had a walk around the camp:-

 

We all got back in Milly & headed back to the Eiffel Tower, hoping the ques would be shorter, now that it was late evening.
The ques were shorter but still pretty long & we que'd for over 2 hrs to get to the front. It was a nightmare getting constantly harassed by street hawkers, but it was funny when the police half heartedly chased them away, they would run off like rats & then return 2 minutes later. Most of them are either selling water or Eiffel tower key rings.

 

By 22.30 we were on our way to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower. Leah made friends with a little French boy while we were in the que. On the second floor we took some pictures of the view & then qued for another 3/4 of an hr to go to the top:-

 

By the time we got to the top all of Paris was in darkness & the lights we could see looked really pretty especially the River Seine, glinting like a silver ribbon, meandering off into the distance:-

 

We caught the lift back down to the second floor, only to be confronted by another huge que for the lift back down, we decided to walk down the steps to the first floor. It was quite fortunately really as if we had caught the lift we would have missed this floor, I'm glad we didn't because it had the best views of all.
On this floor there was a small art gallery, a restaurant & a cinema, we had a quick look around but it was getting late & we didn't want to miss the last lift down:-

 

I even managed to get a few pics of Milly from the Eiffel Tower, how cool is that?
By now it was midnight and we were all well & truly knackered. We caught the lift back to the ground & trudged our way back to Milly in the car park. It had been over 4 hrs since I'd left her in the car park so I was quite relieved to see that I didn't have a ticket or a clamp. My feet were killing I'd swapped my flip flops from yesterday for rubber crocks & they had worn the top of my feet raw, so I was glad to get them off. On the way back to the camp site I saw loads of good photo opportunities but I was just too knackered to take advantage of them:-

 

The next morning we managed to get up & packed by the time the rain started at about 11.30. We hitched up & said goodbye to Paris. We started our 280 KM run to Calais. We needed to be at the ferry by1600 that meant we had only an hour to spare. I knew Milly wouldn't let me down. We grabbed breakfast on the way in a services, French services make the UK ones look dirt cheap in comparison:-

 

We got to Calais thinking we only had 5 minutes to spare for our ferry at 1600. We weren't worried as we could always catch the next one, they're hardly going to make us stay in France now are they? It was at this point that we realised we got the time wrong, the ferry wasn't until 23.15!
We called in a KFC as we were all starving, it was the first place we come across & so we went there. We feasted inside till we were all stuffed & then headed for the ferry terminal.

We arrived at the terminal at 1725 & we caught the 1805 ferry at no extra cost. It was delayed until 1900 due to congestion in the Chanel.

 

We were in Dover & on British soil by 2000 UK time, we fuelled up, changed the sat nave from KM to old fashioned miles & headed the 270 Miles home to Sunny Swansea.
We stopped again in Reading for fuel & to check the oil etc. I'd used about 1/2 a Litre since getting off the ferry, it had started coming out of the crank shaft oil seal at the from by the fan.
First chance I get I'm going to pull the engine strip & sort it.

When we toured Europe in 2009 we used 12 Litre s of oil, this time we used 3.5 Litre's. Two of Litre's were used on British soil on the way home, so clearly the problem is getting worse & will need addressing soon.
About 100 miles from home the wipers packed in & it had been raining heavily since getting on the M4.
They will work once with a gentle shove, then stop again. I did repair the motor 3 years ago by replacing the plastic cog in the motor, looks like I'll need to do the same again. Fortunately I always keep my windscreen clean & trat it with rain-x so it was quite safe driving without wipers.
We pulled up in the drive at 01.00. We were all shattered & decided to straight to bed, we'd sort out the unpacking & tidying in the morning.

 

After a bit of photoshop:-