Arrondissement de Palaiseau

It started of being a beautiful day, sun shining and Michelle and i eager to start our adventure. The first train from the hague the Brussels was perfect and easy. We dismantled the bikes on the train and put them into the plastic bags/bike bags like I was told on the phone by customer service. Then everything went wrong. The second train was thalys to Paris. We arrived early and the train manager said no. Just no. No bikes and no English and no smile. I argued obviously since this is expensive and I triple checked that I can bring a bike on this train as long as it was In a bag, which we had. He finally said yes. So we spent the next 10 minutes frantically unpacking and dismantling our bikes, I put my bike in train, grab all our bags put them in our seat go out to help Michelle with her bike and the doors close. "What are you doing???" The train steward asked me as if I was retarded. I helping get the bike on the train.... it apparently had to go on the next train, I said no it's ready let's go! No no no. That was it. The doors were not going to be opening again until Paris. We were stuck there watching in disbelief as all our possessions and my bike sit at the station for another 30 seconds, then slide away.

After another lecture at us by the steward, who truly could not believe my stupidity, the helpful ones arrived. "Do you have your tickets? " no of course we didn't. But we were able to catch the next train to Paris which was 30 min later and they called the train manager. When we arrived In Paris i had to run to the previous train which was getting ready to go back to Brussels and all of our stuff was there, thank goodness! We spent ages just outside the station putting our bikes together properly.

Cycling through Paris is terrible, scary, not just from cars but also pedestrians. We made our way to the Eiffel tower and decided to treat ourselves for the first 3km of riding with an ice cream; only to find our shared wallet was empty. Michelle's was empty. And so was mine. Someone had robbed our bags while they sat in our seats. We had about 300 Euro in cash, mainly because NL does not accept visa or MasterCard.

We were obviously devastated! But kept going, we cycled for a total of 28km today to get to the warm showers host (couch surfing for cyclists! -although I still don't feel like one yet). We are with a lovely family just outside of Paris. They gave us dinner and route ideas.

Day 2: towards orleans. It can only better right?Read more