Rather than one post per day covering the 4 days it took us to get home, I’m throwing everything into one post, symbolic of the shift from foot power to the blur of motorized vehicles of one sort or another!
We were picked up from Chamonix by a Mountain Transfers van. We were the only occupants for the hour or so ride, which might have felt a bit awkward, except the driver was very interesting. He was a young man from the UK. He and his fiancee had spent the last few years in various countries doing things like guiding, working in lodges, driving shuttles. They’d worked in New Zealand, Canada, various places in Europe, all on fairly short term (months-long) contracts. What a great way to see the world before settling down.
We arrived at Geneva train station a little after 10. We stored our bags in the handy automated baggage lockers leaving us with a few hours to explore the city.
Dave pointed out that I could take photos of flowers like this anywhere, but I liked this photo enough to include in despite being nothing Geneva-specific.
We thought electric mail man tricycles were brilliant…
The church (cathedral?) was a strange mix of architectures, some looking either brand new or newly restored.
Look, all the versions of Professor Dumbledore in one place!
This is the world’s longest bench. Dave reminded me that it was included in The Amazing Race one season, where the task was to figure out how many people could fit on the bench. This photo already looks long enough….
But Dave was sitting in the middle of it. Truly an enormous bench!
We stopped for lunch at a snooty outdoor cafe that seemed primarily pitched at business folks. Or maybe, based on the eyebrow raising placemat, business men really. I was SO tempted to grab the pen out of my purse and make various wardrobe adjustments.
This is the oddest thing I’ve included anywhere on the blog…the toilet seat cleaner at the cafe. Such a strange idea, but the motion of the oval seat is quite mesmerizing…
More walking around. This is the river draining Lake Geneva…the Rhône, which both flows into the lake as a glacial river and flows out, having lost any hint of glaciers. The River Arve–the one that our hotel in Chamonix looked out onto–flows into the Rhône. Felt still connected to our Alpine adventure when I realized that.
Eventually we toddled back to the station. We explored it all, figuring out what platform the TGV to Paris would most likely leave from. It took forever for it to finally show up on the departures board–I got quite bored and restless wandering around, especially because slow walking\standing remains the most problematic thing for my back. Eventually though the train was listed and we retrieved our bags from the lockers and went toward the platform, only to find out we then had to stand in a line waiting for the passport\customs doors to open.
At last, onto the platform, where the train showed up reasonably quickly. It was a lovely smooth fast ride (300km\h was the fastest speed we saw on the display). It took something like 2.5 hours to get to Paris Gard de Lyon.
We got an Uber ride to our hotel, the Sofitel Arc du Triomphe. Lovely hotel room, though our preference would have been to make the bathroom way smaller and the bedroom\sitting area bigger. But overall it worked out well for our 3 night stay. Amazingly, I didn’t take a single photo of it, inside or out.
We ate in the hotel restaurant–really great food, though also incredibly expensive.
We made use of the hotel concierge to get tickets on the hop-on\hop-off bus for the next 2 days, and for a comedy show for Saturday evening called How to Become a Parisian in One Hour.
So now, on to Saturday…
We had breakfast (super expensive again! I think we’re in Paris!!) and headed out to the Champs Elysees to catch the bus. We basically sat on the bus for two days 🙂 We did relatively little hopping off, content to just watch the city go by from the open top deck.
We headed back to the hotel for some of the afternoon, and then took an Uber to where the evening entertainment was happening and had dinner at a not very memorable pizza place. The show itself was very fun–a French stand up comedian teaching (in English) a surprisingly global audience (many European countries, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Belize, Canada, Australia, Singapore…) how to be Parisian in different scenarios such as ordering at a restaurant, hailing a cab, or going to a nightclub. It was rather funny, and also reassuring that our sense of locals seeming moody and hard to connect with was nothing personal!
We got an Uber back to the hotel…and then it was Sunday, last full day before heading home!
We had found some advanced purchase tickets for the Eiffel Tower that would save us from having to stand in the ticket line for an hour by having us be part of a tour group. We met the group at at travel office just 5 minutes or so away from the tower. Alas, we found out that the tickets were for the following Sunday not this one!!! Oops. We hung around feeling a bit despondent, but in fact there were enough no-shows that we could squeeze in anyway. Our tour guide is the bearded man standing behind me. He spoke four languages (Spanish, Catalan, Italian, English) and was hoping to become proficient at French during his year as a guide.
Can’t fathom who allowed that black slab of a skyscraper to be put there–so out of place. It would have been a bit more palatable if it could at least have been located on the center line instead of offset.
Better view looking the other way–the collection of skyscrapers further in the distance doesn’t seem as jarring.
We noticed the huge fountain, and after leaving the Eiffel Tower we went in search of it. When we first arrived, only the insignificant fountains were in action. We waited around for a while, and eventually I looked up on my phone if there was any kind of schedule for the big one. The answer was “not officially, but they often seem to go off about 10-15 minutes before the hour. I turned to tell Dave this, and the big water cannon fired up, right at 15 minutes before the hour.
We hopped back on the bus. The only memorable thing from that tour around (other than it being rather too warm) was the Moulin Rouge.
We got off the bus as close as possible to where the famous rat catchers shop is. It inspired the Disney Ratatouille movie. Took a while to find it, but it was a lovely area of the city (to my surprise!) and so the wandering around was rather pleasant.
Then Uber back to the hotel, pack up, eat dinner, get ready to head home on….Monday:
Uber to Gard du Nord. Caught sight of this unique ClockTree 🙂
Cleared two rounds of passport control (one to leave France, one to enter UK) and customs. Gathered at the platform with masses of other people then got on the train, leaving right on time (9:40am).
A bumpier ride than the smooth TGV from Geneva to Paris, but otherwise just fine. Arrived at St Pancras at 10:40 or so (2 hour train ride, with one hour time adjustment between Paris and London).
Then took the Piccadilly line for an hour all the way to Heathrow Terminal 5, arriving a good 3.5 hours before the flight. All worked perfectly. It was definitely a risk to take the Eurostar the morning before an afternoon long haul flight, but we got away with it 🙂
Enjoyed the luxury of top deck of the BA 747 to Seattle.
What an amazing trip we’ve had! Will write up a summary post at some point, once the blur of re-entry into normal life has eased!!
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