Skip to main content

Paris and now on our way to Barcelona

I have had every good intention of writing but somehow my mind is so full of thoughts and impressions, it is hard to keep up with it. Right now, at 1:15 pm on Thursday May 2nd, we are on a train to Barcelona. We left Paris at 10:00 am, and have just stopped at Nimes. In a few more minutes, we will be at Montpelier. The train journey has been very good, the train travels at 286 km/h so trying to get photographs is difficult. Not to say that I haven’t tried :)

Our trip from Dover to Paris yesterday went really well, especially considering that we missed our intended ferry and so had to get the one an hour later. Which made catching our train at the Calais Frethun station—which is actually a good 20-minute drive outside of Calais—hair raising. We arrived with five minutes to spare. Ironic that we could arrive at the train station five minutes before the train departed and get on while in Dover we arrived 45 minutes before the ferry departed and they wouldn’t let us. They are very strict on how one gets to the ferry from the passenger terminal. Only by bus and that bus ONLY leaves the passenger terminal an hour before, not a minute after. But never mind, we got to where we wanted to go and I think it was probably more important to catch the train, where the tickets are NOT transferable, than the ferry, where they were. Although we ended up paying E40-00 for the taxi!

We arrived in Paris at 3:30 and walked about a mile to our hotel, which was on a small street, rue Saulnier, quite near the Cadet Metro Station. Because we were wheeling/dragging three suitcases, we hadn’t wanted to take the Metro. Stairs are very difficult with the largest one. The staff in the hotel were beyond gracious and welcoming. They were very complimentary/charming about my fractured Franglais. The room was small but very modern and comfortable. Richard’s back was hurting so he stayed in the room for an hour while I wandered the streets of Montmartre and walked up the hill to where I could see Sacre Coeur. I took several wrong turns as there are so many streets—like a spider’s web—but eventually I was at a point where I could see it. But it was now almost 5:30 and we were going out to dinner at 6:00. Plus there were SO many people! It was good enough, for me, to be able to see it again after so many years.






I will post separately about dinner.


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

December in South Arica 1977, Part One

 December in South Africa 1977, Part One I had never understood candlelight in quite this way before. Oh there had been candles on the table Christmases past back home in Canada. For atmosphere, for festivity. While the electric crystal chandelier above cast the “real” light on a table laden with turkey, potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce.… But this, this was different. Here in the corrugated iron shack that my friends had referred to as “the cottage”—not any cottage that I had ever seen in my growing up in Quebec—with no other light either inside the cottage nor outside in the black night of the Transkei, I understood how candlelight could draw a world down into the narrowness of those around the light, as if nothing else in the world existed.  I looked at the six faces around the table, illuminated in the candlelight, my own pulsing with sunburn. "Oh you’ll be grand," they’d told me down at the beach that day. "We’ll tell you when to get out of the sun." And toni...
1 comment
Read more

January 2024 and blogging

  I haven't posted on my blog for a long time. Partly that was due to not knowing what to write about and partly it was wondering if I wanted to put myself "out there" anymore. And in what way. I subscribe to a few blogs on Substack, which is a subscription-based blog. You can pay to have your own blog, you can pay for someone else's blog, and that means you get to write and post and get comments back from a whole lot of people. You can comment on other people's blogs--if you pay--or else you can just read the blog and not pay. Of course you might miss some of the "pay only" content--much like modern news media has teaser stuff but to read the whole article, you have to pay for a subscription. The Substack blogs cover all kinds of topics and there are a few "professional" writers--meaning they're journalists and writers who have published and been paid larger bucks than the $5 a month they get per subscription on Substack--but I think most ...
12 comments
Read more