On Thursday, May 15th, we took off from Logan Airport for Paris (I, Louise, was suitably tranquilized with sangria at Todd English's restaurant in the American terminal plus a "cocktail" of valium and dramamine.) No leg room? No problemo! Who would notice? Not me! Arrival at CDG at 6:30 am Paris time (pronounced saydayjay) was uneventful - the immigration officer could barely manage a stamp on the passport and our baggage seemed to merit no scrutiny. We met up with Alex (Louise's sister) and took the shuttle bus to Gare de Lyon, one of the Parisian train stations. I'm constantly amazed by the beauty of France's public places, particularly the Metropolitain (le Metro) and the train stations (Gares.) Not to mention the TGV (pronounced tayjayvay) trains themselves! It's hard not to contrast them to the T and Amtrak - which are very weak contenders.
CDG TGV station Entrance to le Metro in the Latin Quarter
We arrived at the Gare de Lyon and begun the search for luggage lockers (the plan was to store our luggage and engage on a whirlwind tour of musees before taking the TGV to Macon Loche in the afternoon.)
Armed with our pocket French dictionary, we wandered around fruitlessly, even braving the attempt of asking for directions from two very young soldiers armed with sub-machine guns (we were lucky they didn't shoot us for brutalizing their language so badly!) Eventually we found our way to a basement in the back of the very large building. Interestingly, we went through more security to drop our luggage in the train station than to enter the country!
Stay tuned for Gpops and Gmoms in the Musees, and their further adventures in Burgundy!
1 comment:
Tres excellent! I can't wait for the picture of Jim in a little plum beret. How do you say kilt in French?
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