Our journey beginsTake Off, AustraliaTransit in SingaporeThe place where the books are black.London on footOxford, United KingdomNever again, so long as I may live.Markets and musicals... cliche much?Last days in LondonIch bin ein Jam-DonutI like your Altstadt better than your NeustadtBrezl bigger than your head!Ze castle of ze crazy KingMalvenue à Paris!Tuesday? What Tuesday?!The Louvre in 30 secondsThat Spears bird has given Brittany a bad name...Let the wine flow freely!A very Gaudí dayMontserrat, SpainValencia, SpainMadrid, SpainThe moment of truth!Restaurant Gordon RamsayThere... and back again.
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Paris, France
So, as promised, we found a cute little restaurant in Brunnen, with an amazing view of the Forggensee and the surrounding mountains; we dined on meat wrapped in meat (no beers as big as our heads though- they only had the comparatively "small" half-litre variety) and we took a moonlight swim with a perfect view of the castle. I can honestly say, walking back to the hotel that evening I was about as relaxed as I can remember feeling in a long, long time. Aaah, how things can change in the space of 24 hours.
We'd already had a mini-heart attack in München when we tried to reserve our seats to Paris, only to be told by the cashier that it would be impossible to get there, as there were no more seats for Eurail passholders. If we wanted seats, they would cost us several hundred Euro. We found a dodgy internet café, and frantically searched for any plane, train or automobile (or combination thereof) that would get us there, before we gave up and returned to the station, tails between our legs, fully resigned to having to pay several hundred Euro for tickets we'd essentially already paid for. Thankfully, we got another cashier this time who, with a few keystrokes, told us that the seats were ours, no problems. It turns out that the first cashier was just an idiot! Another bit of stress occurred when our already tight 7 minute transfer at Stuttgart was made even tighter when our train incurred a 5 minute delay- giving us about 2 minutes to catch our connecting train, which we did... barely!
So really, we should have been happy to make it to Paris at all! It was starting to seem like someone didn't want us to to be there. This was made more apparent when we went to book the rest of our French trains, only to be told that every train to Quimper was booked on the day we wanted to travel. So, our choices were either to leave Paris a day later and miss our friends' wedding, which was the initial reason we decided to come to Europe, or to leave a day early and lose a chunk of time from Paris. Obviously, there wasn't a 'choice' here at all so we, not very happily, booked an earlier train, and resolved to try and cram Paris into a day.
I'm silently fuming at this point, as we head off to catch the Metro to where we'll be staying. After standing in a line a the ticket machine for 10 minutes, because 2 machines were already broken, watching people walk away as normal, someone at the front of the line finally decides to tell the rest of us that this one is broken too, so we get to join the back of the ONE remaining line to buy tickets. Now, keep in mind that Gare de L'Est is a local, regional, national and international hub station, servicing a city of 9 million people in the City Centre alone. So, imagine ONE ticket machine for Flinders St, Spencer St, and ooh, let's throw in the Airport just for fun... do you see where I'm going with this?
We waited another 10 minutes, without moving, before choosing the lesser of two evils- walking 2kms, in 30° heat with assorted rucksacks, backpacks and a rapidly expanding souvenir bag, through the middle of Paris, navigating unmarked streets, to get to our hotel. By the time we got there the 'silent fuming' had turned to 'silent smoke coming from my ears'. I did calm down though, figured that there was nothing that we could d about it all now, and was determined to enjoy the remaining little time we had in Paris. With that in mind, I put on a nice new shirt, and thought we could go to a little French bistro, maybe order a bottle of Côte du Rhone, have some Pâtè de Campagne, some foie gras an enjoy the finer things France has to offer, and forget about the last few hours. A great idea really, until our waiter knocked my glass of said Côte du Rhone all over me, ruining my favourite new shirt, before emptying a shaker of salt on me to 'fix' it. The rest of the dinner passed in a bit of a haze, really.
We went back to the hotel, determined to sleep and start fresh on Wednesday, but even that wasn't to be. The 30° heat meant we had to have the windows and curtains open, but the sun not even starting to set until after 10pm meant that it was like the middle of the day in our room until after midnight. Arrgh... Paris, je ne t'aime pas!
OK, that's it, spleen vented. Let us never speak of it again.
K&B
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