Recap: Paris, Day 1: Train (Oct 11, 2008)

So, here it finally is. My parents came over for a visit in early October, and they treated us to an unbelievable week trip to Paris. The cost for a van was a little more than we expected (~600 euros), so we decided to hop on a couple of trains and do the Paris metro when we got there. Good thing too, apparently there are about 60 euros in tolls each way, and parking in Paris is supposed to be a nightmare. In hindsight, there is no way it would have been as good with a car. Anyway, the German ICE went from Freiburg to Strasbourg, and then we took the TGV the rest of the way to Paris. The TGV was crazy, we were cruising at speeds of around 250-300 km/h. The trip went pretty well, considering the kiddies had to sit on the train for 4.5 hours.

I am actually faking it in the picture above. Sure, I know, no one is going to believe that. This next little clip was on the ICE at the start of the trip, so things are still going smooth before Reese freaked out on the TGV:

Well, after lots of coloring and cruising the aisles and visiting with Grandma and Grandpa, we made it to Gare du Nord in Paris:

We figured we didn't really have to take care of our luggage in Paris, right? (Look behind Jodi). The kids sure wore us out on the train, so we were quite tired and banished them to the stroller. We had to catch a couple of connections on the Metro/regional trains to get to the condo, so we wandered around a bit. As soon as we got our bearings, we found a 'shortcut' to the regional station, which took us up 3 flights of stairs (no elevator, no escalator, whiney kids, whiney parents carrying the stroller) into some strange neighborhood. We finally found 'magenta' station or something and went down 3 flights of stairs to train level. We learned later that the two stations are actually joined, I think. Well, we made one more connection about half an hour away, and then got off at our stop (the stop that I thought was the closest). We ended up dragging our stuff around 2 km along the streets to our condo. The condo was really hard to find, and it turned out being a hotel and was a completely different name than what our place was supposed to be. It was great to get to the rooms and throw everything on the ground, even if we found some towels and rags scrunched in the bowels and recesses of closets and cupboards. After thoroughly making our room messy, we set out to find a restaurant nearby, and I picked a good old-fashioned French restaurant, El Dorado. (Mexican. Umm Burritos. Heck, umm, doritos):We all look a little spaced out/zombied - Jodi is falling asleep, I am cutting the wild boar, and Erika looks like a space alien. The burritos were good though. After that, we retired to the condo (about half a kilometer away) and we started to feel a little unsure of our surroundings - more on that later. We watched some French tennis recap, and then German darts or bowling or something else like that, and then off to bed. All in all, not a bad start.

Jeff and Jodi