TGV to Paris

Anybody who’s spoken with us about this trip knows how excited we were to take the new, improved bullet train, the TGV; MM had even brought along a recent article from The Economist on the network throughout France and connected countries and the European goal to have train travel be competitive rival to the airline industry. You can imagine our excitement at seeing the comfortable and arty seats–and our distress at discovering that the ones we’d been assigned would face backwards.

Bargain hunters will appreciate that our 2nd class seats, backwards or no, cost 18 Swiss Francs a piece: something like $15. We have the new service’s opening specials in May and especially OH’s determination and early morning sensibility to thank for that.

It turns out that facing backwards at a very smooth 200+ mph isn’t nearly as uncomfortable as we’d expected. Wondering what it looks like? Something like this:

Three and a half hours later we were in Paris, enduring the shift from 200 mph to 30 mph on the crowded, standing-room-only metro, lugging our stuff. True to AM’s already well-established navigational skills,, global positioning intuition (hereafter referred to as GPI), we emerged from the subway within 10 feet of our hotel. The Royal Hotel Saint-Michel was a bit of quiet in France’s equivalent of the modern, cleaned-up Times Square (truly the Place St. Michel on the Left Bank).

We’ve quickly discovered that Paris is a matter of direction: on one side are at least 100 restaurants beckoning tourists to eat dinner for as little as 10 euros. An immediate right brings us to the broad St. Michel and then the quay, with the Seine and Notre Dame right before us.

Our walk through the Ile de la Cité brought us to a delightful dinner (this time on the sidewalk rather than a veranda) overlooking a small park where locals played more pétanque and practiced tai chi (but not together). (See an annotated photo here.) Then on to the Pont-Neuf, where we spontaneously hopped on a boat tour despite the growing darkness. Much to our delight, the boat’s large spotlights created dramatic lighting for every major sight along the Seine, from bridges to buildings to a crowded milonga on the quay (more toe-stepping and bumping than ochoes for those tango-ers, I’m sure) to under-bridge camping and unfazed lovers to our final spectacular sight, the Eiffel Tower.

However, for the tourist seeking precise knowledge, beware: even when speaking English, the heavily French-accented tour guide was close to incomprehensible to us. (Fortunately, the native French-speaker behind us was giving her own translation to her friend, so we weren’t left in the verbal dark.)

It was Paris at its best: magnificent 18th c. buildings, giant statues of generals of former wars contrasting with the vibrance of throngs of young people crowded along the Seine truly participating in joie de vie. AM has long been a Paris skeptic (from afar), but it appears she’s giving in.