05-25 Yep, ANOTHER Train Ride

Nothing much happened today except we traveled on a train from Caen, France to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport. So, you get to hear about train traveling.

We went down to breakfast this morning. It's like most, but less; and there's no one there. Totally self serve; very limited in items, but enough. Karen has two boxes of Kellogg's Coco Krispies. All of the cereals on the breakfasts so far have been Kellogg's. She has milk on it, a glass of water and a yogurt. I have my normal croissant(s), a bowl of fruit and two glasses of juice. For that they charged us $9€ each. Ouch. l usually ask at check-in is breakfast included. Most of the places we choose include it, but we made this reservation at the last minute in Bayeux so we payed the piper.

We caught the train from Caen to Paris today at 10am walking to the station. We get a reservation because it's only $1.50€ each extra with our EuroRail Pass for a reserved seat on this train. Some of the trains here are so crowded and this isn't even the peak season. But peak season is getting closer now. Having a reservation for a seat makes life more pleasant and less stressful.

I've got the laptop out with power (power comes with first class; sometimes it works, sometimes not). I'm working on a Zermatt blog today. Since Karen is seated next to me she gets to see the pictures!! As she would say, "Ahh the MATTERHORN!!!"

We arrive at Paris St. Lazare train station and we figure out where to go. There's like an entire town, down underground in Paris. Its not like the NY subway where you go down and you have maybe four choices of where to go. In NYC you have to decide which side of the track to go to on in order to go the direction you want.

Under Paris you've got maybe six different directions to go in all and maybe up to 4 or 5 different trains coming through to different places. You have to read all the signs and sometimes the sign is slightly around a corner. Then you've got food locations and store signs that clutter up your reading. We weeded our way through all this and bought a subway ticket only to just miss the train. No big deal normally but the next one didn't come for 30 minutes. That means we won't make it to our next train in the Paris Nord station.

After we arrived at Nord we got lunch and found a place to eat it. Found the next train and it didn't have any stops until the airport so we got here just a few minutes later then we expected.

Found the free hotel shuttle. Goes to several hotel; ours, All Seasons Roissey, was first. Saw this great looking airplane taking off on the way there. Hey, wait a minute. Those don't fly anymore!

Arrive at the hotel at 3pm. Small, modern room. Window doesn't open but the fan works. NOT. They, the motels, say they have A/C and they do, but the question I've found out you should ask is, "What month do you turn on your A/C"?????

Went out to dinner at 5:30. The guy at the front desk told us where to go. Had a good calzone then walked back home.

Tomorrow we get to go on a new roller coaster at Parc Asterix about 10 miles north of our hotel.