Skip to main content

Last stop Paris

It’s now Tuesday, May 7th and we are headed on the train to Paris from Madrid (via Barcelona.) Last hotel on my itinerary as I cancelled our trip to the Lake District. It was just too much traveling, time to head to Sheila’s and stay put until it’s time to go to Southampton and our boat trip home. It’s been a great holiday but I am already ready to go home. That’s not to say that I am not glad that we will be seeing Sheila and England. Of course I am. It’s just that thoughts of home and Mitzi, walking and being quiet, have been coming into my mind more often. 

I think I posted about Segovia. At least I wrote something up on my iPhone (currently typing on my iPad) that I hope was saved. Today it’s just been a very long day of traveling. We packed last night which was quite the job. We haven’t bought a lot of heavy stuff, just some clothes and a couple of Spanish tiles, t-shirts for the kiddos. But it still meant rearranging things. Glad we did it last night though. It took over an hour and this morning we got up at 6:00 and by 7:00 were out of the hotel and on our way by taxi to the train station. 

Ah taxis. Taking a lot more than I’d budgeted for. Think I’ve written about that. It is just too hard to haul the suitcases around and definitely not on any subways. So there will be a taxi tonight and a taxi Thursday morning to Gare du Nord for the Eurostar and then a taxi at St. Pancras to transfer to Paddington. And maybe (probably) a taxi from Southampton train station to the boat a week Thursday. 

Still, the overarching thought for me today is how thankful that we have traveled in safety and good health so far. That we haven’t lost anything. I had a moment of high anxiety when we got to Madrid Atocha train station this morning and I couldn’t remember where I had put my green card. I worried I had left it on the bed as I was packing last night. Looked frantically through my bags and finally located it in a small pocket. Have put it with my Canadian passport now; I hadn’t kept it with my passport because I always worry it will fall out. But I do think it is the best place for it. 

But traveling healthy and safely have meant we could go from place to place, see the things we wanted to see. To say nothing of what it would have cost if we had got sick or lost something—or even lost each other. I wonder if this is a function of getting older. I never thought this much about my health when I was young, even ten years ago I really didn’t think a lot about health. Always took out insurance of course but my illness last November and episode in March shook me and I notice that R just doesn’t have the energy anymore, he is less sure of himself than he used to be, and there is the necessity on both our parts to have access to WCs (toilettes, aseos) every few hours. The joys of getting older. Thus we travel while we can although our next trip will be way less ambitious than this one was! No multiple transfers and no hauling loads of luggage!!

Well, I suppose I should visit the train’s WC again before we get to Paris. Why is it that these trains always run out of loo paper? Do people use that much? More prosaic musings :)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Life on board the Queen Mary

Passenger's log on the Queen Mary 2: Dec 9th - First Day at Sea Didn't sleep well--think it was the soused mackerel at dinner. Anyway, R and I woke up at about 6:00 am and discussed the order of the day. Quite the swell outside and I can feel the roll of the ship. (No seasickness thank goodness!) Despite the mackerel, I was hungry so we went to King's Court at 6:30 a.m. Buffet with loads of choice of course. We sat in an alcove looking out at the ocean. Our server was from Croatia, Slavan. I asked him my burning question of the day--why did we get a free bottle of wine but a regular bottle of Diet Coke cost $3.75? Diet Pepsi is $1.00 less. Fruit juices are free on tap. Coffee, tea, milk, ditto. But you have to pay for soft drinks. Very odd. Slavan says it is because Cunard can't get a good contract with Coke. Hmmm.... our local School District back in Sierra Vista can negotiate .50 a can for the soda machines in the teachers' lounges but Cunard has to cha...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sunday in Richmond Park & Memories

  One of the reasons I came back to London after Ireland was to keep a date with my cousin Elizabeth: a Sunday morning walk in Richmond Park. When I moved to England in May of 1978, I rented a room in a house near Richmond Park. I'd heard of the room through a colleague at McGill University's Human Resources Department, where I was working as a Senior Clerk. Montreal had become a bit difficult for me to be in owing to a twice-broken heart and a feeling I wasn't going anywhere at McGill. It seemed like an omen, then, on the plane returning from South Africa in January of 1978--I keep promising to write about that--that I came across an article in a magazine about young Canadians living in London. I'd always loved the idea of being in London what with growing up on a diet of British movies and then all of the articles about Swinging London in the 1960s/early 1970s.  By the time I arrived at Mirabel Airport, I had the perfect antidote to my wounded pride over South...
Post a Comment
Read more

Duckett's Grove/Castle, Co. Carlow

Golly I am tired tonight! We had a really busy day. We went into Carlow town to return a pair of sweatpants that R. bought and didn't like. I also went to the Bank of Ireland and started up my bank account. They do things very differently here than in Sierra Vista. There are no tellers for simple deposits or withdrawals; the bank branch in Carlow consists of four ATM machines and one international exchange cashier. And three personal bankers who are extremely helpful. I discovered that you don't make a deposit, you make a lodgment. Weird, eh? We went to Tesco's after the bank to get our every-other-day food shopping done. Small refrigerators--have to be careful in buying. We also bought some new "orthopedic" pillows that will hopefully help our neck issues. Bought a couple of pre-made sandwiches and ate them in the car when we parked at Duckett's Grove. Duckett's Grove is a ruined 19th century great house whose owners kept redesigning the original house ...
Post a Comment
Read more