France - Day 1 (Paris)

Sunday, 4 September 2011 (again)

The first thing I (Sarah) must share was our train trip adventure from the airport to our hotel.  Several unfortunate things had happened to us up to this point, and they continue at a daily rate.  Lost/Stolen valuables, luggage bags breaking, bad service, and many more that we will share in future pieces.  We were both feeling quite stressed by this stage, but I began to take it in my stride a bit more, seeing these things more as part of the adventure.

The Paris rail network is even more complex and criss-crossey than the London tube, and announcements are not provided in English.  However, we were able to work out where we needed to go after intensly studying the train map several times.

On the first train we boarded, a bloke got on who smelled of horse manure, and although there were many empty seats around us, he chose to sit opposite myself.  I was in a four seater compartment, and Jason was in another.  This man then proceeded to stare at my breasts for the remainder of the trip whilst I did my best to cover myself and avoid eye contact with him by studying a French phrasebook.

When we went to get off, we learned that the trains here close their doors without checking if people are still getting on or off, so I would have left Jason behind if it wasn't for a kind man who held the train door open whilst Jason jumped out with his luggage.

The second train smelled of perfume but was really tiny and we had to keep moving our luggage everytime people got on, got off or needed to get past us.  We thought we had mastered the art of getting off the train in five seconds after the first experience, but we were wrong.  I got off quickly, but one of Jason's bags fell on the floor when he was trying to squeeze his luggage between two of the handrails.  A quick-witted gentlemen forced the door back open so Jason could jump out with his bags, left one of them behind and another man threw it out onto the platform for us whilst another forced the train door back open to make this possible.

I thought the whole experience was funny but Jason was bemused.

We got to the final station in one piece, and attempted to communicate with bad French with an information lady who answered only in French.  We just headed in the direction she pointed in.

We finally arrived at our hotel, the Mercure at the Eiffel Tower.  The concierge was courteous but advised us the lift would be out of order until tomorrow morning, so we would have to take our months worth of luggage up five flights of stairs to the top level.  He helped us up to our room which we discovered had a great view of the top half of the Eiffel Tower with a spectacular light show...