7 days until we return. This morning we woke up bright and early in the morning so we could make sure to catch our train to Paris. We had a 3 hour drive, we needed to return the rental car plus find some lunch and our train. All before 11:25. We were shooting for a 7:00 departure from the house and almost made it out on time. Traffic was great and with the help from the GPS in the car we made great time. It helped to not have pouring down rain!
Once at the car rental place we dropped off the car and made the short walk to the train station. We were almost a full hour early, which is always nice. Tim and Brenda headed off to grab lunch (kebabs at one of the train station restaurants) and Greg and Michelle guarded the bags. Once our train bin was posted, we all headed that way, only to have a very small train pull up in the bin. There were far too many people for the size train that was there! Thankfully an announcement was soon made that the bin had been changed from bin 8 to bin 1 and we needed to move to the new bin. Upon arrival, there was a sufficiently large train for the group of people traveling.
The train ride was uneventful, which was great. There was a mom with her two children who would speak to them in fluent French, but when she had enough of their antics and wanted to get their attention she would say something stern to them in English. And they knew, when mom switched to English, you better pay attention. :)
Once in the train station in Paris we debarked and searched out the metro. passes in hand we looked to board a very packed train. And then something happened. Tim, Greg and Michelle were on the metro, but there was a french lady who began yelling next to us. The next thing we noticed was the French lady pushing two girls off of the metro and still yelling in French. Brenda was on the train, but something had happened between her and the two girls. And the zippers on her day pack were open.
It turns out that the three of us got on the metro and she was going to get on last. Then a girl came and stood right in front of her as if she was going to get on the metro. Brenda went to walk around her and felt a buzzing sensation on her shoulder. That was enough to distract her and apparently the two girls used the opportunity to get into her bag. The French woman saw what was happening and yelled at the top of her lungs at them. Brenda finished getting on, the girls were shoved off and we all stood there shocked. Seriously, we were in Paris all of 15 minutes. Then the French woman proceeded to lecture Brenda in french about being careful and watching out for herself. Thankfully they zipper they had almost open had a hairbrush on top and the other one was not down far enough to get into. So they got nothing, but we got a good scare. And thankfully we were all ok.
We headed over to our hotel room and decompressed there for a while. Not wanting to waste the day, we headed out for a walk around town. We saw the Seine river, walked across Pointe Neuf, walked around the Louvre museam (which is the former palace) and the Champs Elysse. At the end of the Champs is the Arc de Triumph which Brenda and Greg wanted to climb at some point. After a great dinner at a local chain steakhouse (called Hippopotomus :) we headed off to bed. We are hoping to make tomorrow a full day of site seeing so we can check off a number of our "must dos". It should be a full day of adventure!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment