Paris - and back ^_^
Mel and I are back from Paris. Sound and safe and a bit poorer, but we did get to see A LOT (pictures will follow in the next days) and we had very good weather almost all of time ^__________^
For today's post I'll summarise our first day
Of course the 8th anniversary of T&T ^_~
Apart from that, it was the day that Mel and I went to Paris.
We left home a few minutes before 1 PM and arrived at the tram station the same second the tram did. Lucky!
Arrived at the airport quite early, dropped our luggage and hang around for a while, before we got our cabin baggage checked. I had totally forgotten that I still had the keys to our flat in my pocket and thus the scanner (the hand-held version too) were beeping like mad ^^;;;
They did let my pass though, blaming all the metal at my trousers and shoes for the noises _._
Our flight was totally uneventful and we landed in a quite sunny Paris a few minutes after 4 PM. Got our luggage and then we started our EPIC journey into the city.
The plan (total about 1:00 h):
- Take shuttle bus from Terminal 2G to SNCF-Terminal.
- Buy train tickets
- Go by RER B (train) to Paris and change into Metro for the last few stops.
The execution (total about 2:30 h):
- Take shuttle bus from Terminal 2G to SNCF-Terminal.
- Buy train tickets
- Hear announcement that the trains to Paris are not running.
- Freak out (not too much though)
- Talk to lady from information point and get instructions + new route
- Take shuttle train to Terminal 3
- Take bus to Migne-Whatever station (we rode by bus around the airport, passed by Terminal 2G [where we landed over 1 hour earlier] and got to see the French country side)
- Go by RER B (train) to Paris.
- Then it was just a few stops at the Metro and we found our hotel immediately.
- Rejoice ^^;;
We checked-in, refreshed and left again, as we had booked a cruise on the Seine, followed by dinner in the restaurant that belongs to the shipping company.
We we arrived at the Metro station, made a short calculation and our estimated arrival time was a few minutes before 8 PM + walking there, which was maybe 500 m.
Mel almost went "OMG! We'll never arrive in time", while I was totally calm until we figured out why. The cruise was supposed to start at 8 PM and I thought it was 8:30 PM _._
Luckily the Metro was faster than expected and we managed to arrive at 7:58 PM at the pier. Which didn't mean anything in the end, as the company seemed to have skipped all plans for the day and was just like "stand in that line, exchange your 'voucher' into real tickets, make the cruise with the next available boat and then have dinner there".
We finally got the boat leaving at 8:40 PM. The cruise took about one hour and then we had dinner. Which was okay-ist, though nothing that special, BUT! we were sitting basically ON the Seine and had the Eiffel Tower right behind us ^_^ An Eiffel Tower that was illuminated and even sparkling (every full hour).
Afterwards we walked back to Trocadero station and arrived in the hotel a few minutes after midnight ^^;;;; Dropped dead into the bed and end of day one.