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  • Day 30

    At the end, the pot of gold

    September 22, 2017 in France ⋅ ☀️ 25 °C

    Sadly, we packed our bags, more or less ready to move on to Carcassonne, our next destination. Our train was due to leave at the civilised time of 1455 from Gare Montparnasse, so we were still able to enjoy a leisurely breakfast Parisian style. After checking out, we gave ourselves an hour more of Parisian exploration before we'd take our lives in our hands on the Metro. We'd already seen enough excitement on the underground, and were fervently hoping for an incident-free trip to the main line station of Gare Montparnasse.

    In the meantime, we decided to explore a few streets we hadn't visited before in the area between Les Invalides and L'École Militaire. What a great group of shops were there, much more reasonably priced than on the Champs Élysées and just as interesting. That included a whole lot of new restaurants less touristy than the ones on Rue St Clair and Rue Dominique. Clearly, Paris was already beckoning us to come back for another visit. Our very helpful and friendly hotel receptionist had already told us that morning that we should try to visit Paris next time in July/August rather than in September. Not only is the weather better then but he said that the place is less crowded and prices are lower. It was the opposite from what we'd thought, but evidently major events such as Paris Fashion Week take place in September and draw huge crowds. We've made a mental note for next time.

    Eventually the time came for us to catch the Metro, a part of the trip which we weren't exactly looking forward to. With all their steep stairways up and down, some of the stations are quite challenging for people with luggage. We'd loaded most of our belongings into Brian's suitcase, and Mary bravely pushed on with her bag, but was struggling. (It wasn't all that easy for Brian either). Fortunately, there were so many younger and fitter passers-by who were willing to help her on those wretched stairs. We reached Gare Montparnasse in good time with about 90 minutes to spare before the scheduled departure time. These major stations are huge, with people milling about everywhere, and it isn't always easy to work out what one should do. Furthermore none of the announcements are in English, and the rapidly-gabbled announcements over a distorted PA system are way too challenging for Brian's basic French language skills.

    We knew that for security reasons or whatever the platform number for each train gets announced only 20 minutes before departure, after which there's a mad scramble to reach right coach on the right train on the right platform. So, when we got to five minutes before scheduled departure and our platform number still wasn't showing on the monitors, we started to get anxious. It was then that another announcement in French came over the PA and all the crowd around us went rushing off in one direction. We kind of followed them, unsure as to whether that was the right thing to do, until we eventually found someone who spoke English and who reassured us that, yes, this crowd was all heading for our train on Platform 7 and that it wouldn't leave until everyone was on board.

    We had booked to travel first class on a really good pricing deal and were in Coach number 1. Just to complicate matters we saw that there were two different route numbers and two trains travelling end-to-end. The back-end carriages would be going only as far as Bordeaux while the front half of the train would proceed to Toulouse, our destination. We assumed that the train would stop briefly at Bordeaux to allow this to happen in a safe and orderly manner, though one can never be sure of these things. It was vital therefore that we boarded the correct end of the train since there was no way that one could walk its entire length as there were a couple of locomotives in the middle. This double-train turned out to be really long, long enough to cover two time zones we reckoned, and it took us quite a while for us to reach the front coach.

    Once on board we were really impressed. The carriage was spacious with big comfortable seats and various facilities for business people to work while they travelled at 300kph or so. On time to the minute, we disembarked at Toulouse station where, fortunately, we had 45 minutes in which to work out how to print our pre-ordered tickets for the next sector and find the right platform. Naturally, that involved several more flights of steps but we got there in the end. Of course our original plan had us collecting an Avis rental at Toulouse, so from this point on we were on Plan B. It involved a commuter train which we caught for the hour-long journey to Carcassonne, comfortable enough but not a patch on the luxury of the TGV. A helpful chap we'd chatted to on the train Googled our hotel and told us that it was definitely a long way from the station and that we'd haveto grab a cab. We therefore wandered across to the taxi rank, which was deserted apart from another couple who were waiting there already. They told us we'd need to phone for a cab - the phone number was on a nearby sign - and the operator told us there would be a wait of at least 20 minutes. Fortunately, it wasn't raining, but we weren't too happy at having to wait in this dark isolated area, particularly after the other couple's cab had arrived and taken them to their hotel. After a good 30 minutes we decided to hell with this. Brian's GPS indicated that it was a 1.5km walk and off we set along a lot of deserted and uneven footpaths. We admit that by then we were feeling somewhat cranky, but managed to reach the Hotel Pont Vieux, an old building overlooking a historic bridge (hence the name) and a quiet street with several restaurants.

    We were greeted warmly by the patron and patronne, who made us feel very welcome. They asked if we minded being on the top (ie third) floor, which we didn't. Thank goodness, the patron carried our bags for us up the narrow winding staircase. They told us they'd put us in a newly renovated family suite, and when we saw it, we were impressed. The main bedroom was quite spacious, and there was a second room with two single beds, which gave us plenty of room to store our bags. The bathroom was big and brand-new. We were certainly very happy with our choice of hotel. After all those dozens of stairways and long walks with our luggage we were shattered, so after a quick meal at a nearby restaurant we hit the sack. At least we knew that after a day of great ups and downs we'd struck gold.
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