Montenils

Second breakfast watching the funicular go up and down and then re-packing and check out of Hotel du Theatre. And .... my goodness was it hot at only 10 am! Almost up to 30 degrees I'm sure but, time to waste so a coffee, and tea for Ted, was in order watching the world, or more correctly, the trams go by from the cafe outside the HBF. Then platform 15 for the 11.34 to Paris, Gare de Lyon. A little disappointed with our seat reservation which had a very small amount of window and a large amount of wall, not good for the view. Intrepidly, we decided to go back a row as these did not have the red reserved sticker on. We further decided to then move the red reserved sticker to our new seats so that the originals were then free for poor fools who had obviously not had the forethought to make a reservation. This seemed to have gone well until a pushy American couple got on at Basel and said our seats were theirs! What could we do as there were the red reserved tickets on them .......! Fortunately for us, the "poor fools" who had been sitting in our original seats had got off at Basel so we were able to retake our original seats, although the American couple obviously thought we were "poor fools"!!!!!! I must say I was also disappointed with the TGV buffet which is not well set out and nothing very appetising on sale. I ended up having a glass of wine (standard!), a bag of honey roasted peanuts and a piece of fruit cake. Not a patch on OBB's Munich to Zurich run. Arrival into Gare de Lyon was like getting into an oven .... it was baking!! We took a taxi to Horel Le Mareuil. The room is lovely-standard but modern, colourful and blissfully cool! In fact, I almost felt too cold! We walked to Place de la Republique which is not a place I have been to before, as far as I can remember. We ate in the Cafe de Republique and the whole place was buzzing. Lots of people, lots of traffic and lots to entertain us. The recently broken foot is swollen as usual at the end of the day so time to put it to bed!
PS temperature forecast is 36 tomorrow!!!Read more