Very smooth and easy transition from the Loire to the big city of Paris. Car return was seamless, I did stress a bit about a gas station as they are few and far between but just as I approached the turnoff to the train station, one appeared like magic, nice. On the TGV for the 12:20 departure, found our seats in the car number 13. Tip, and this is the first time for us, so, Check the screens at the station to see where your car lines up to the platform, this ensures you can load quickly without walking through a number of cars. Now that a pretty straight forward bit, the second tip is this, we were standing at letter “J” and our train approaches, okay great, but it goes past us completely before stopping, so many people start running towards to where the train stopped, make sense right? Well as I am gathering up our luggage to also make the dash, a gentleman, speaking okay English, says to stay here as there are two trains going at the same time to the same place, we were in fact in the correct spot. Hmmm. Sure enough less than a minute later our train pulled up, car 13 right in front of me.
In Paris just over an hour later, queued up at the service counter at the metro to purchase a Carnet (book of ten tickets for the metro and bus). These can also be purchased at the kiosk machines but you need exact change or cc. The only downside to the metro is the stairs and sometimes distances to the next trains, we had to do one transfer and with carrying most of the luggage this got a bit exhausting especially in the heat of the day. That said, I love the system here and have no problem doing this, just another tip.
We surfaced at the Opera station and within minutes checked back into the Chess hotel, nice when you know where the hotel is and what to expect. Now they are putting up a new hotel basically across the street, so I don’t think we are going to experience countryside quite over the next few days. After we checked in we headed over to the Lafayette Galleries, perhaps the most beautiful shopping centre anywhere, for a look around, Jan was looking for a few accessories. When at this shopping centre, head to the top floor for an amazing view of Paris.
We were meeting a friend, Michele, and boyfriend, Gerard (yup, that’s correct), over at the Pantheon for drinks and then to a restaurant I have been wanting to try for sometime, Le Coupe Chou, so tonight was the night and it did not disappoint. A wonderful evening and night with great food and conversation as we caught up with Michele. We met Michele at the Umberto cooking school back in 2003, kept in touch loosely, saw each other a few times in Vancouver. She now lives mainly here in Paris but also has a place in Mexico which she visits periodically.
Had a little hiccup on the metro that caused a bit of delay for us getting back to the hotel but all good as we just roll with it.
A few pics..
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