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  • Day 29

    Never a dull moment

    September 21, 2017 in France ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C

    We caught up with our good friends Ian and Eileen for a farewell breakfast at the lovely cafe across the road from the hotel. Later, we chatted with them for a few minutes before they went off to do their packing and we set off with a fairly flexible plan to get to know this wonderful city even better. One thing that's certain is that if one is on holiday in Paris, every day is a good day. Some days may be better than others, but all of them are fantastic.

    Actually, we were very well organised for the first part of this, our last full day, in Paris. We'd decided that we wanted to use the Metro the next day to get ourselves plus luggage from La Tour Maubourg to Gare Montparnasse, from where our train would be leaving for Carcassonne via Toulouse. At least half the Metro stations are quite challenging for this sort of activity, with lots of up and down stairways, some quite long and steep, and mazes of long underground walkways. Most of these stations are yet to be equipped with lifts or escalators. Brian had mapped out two possible routes for getting to Gare Montparnasse, and armed with our tourist transport passes we decided that we'd try each of them out and decide which would be the easier one with our luggage.

    It started out well with us catching the Metro to Concorde station, where we'd change to Line 12 to reach our destination. However, two stops short of Gare Montparnasse, at Rennes, our train stopped, the lights dimmed and an announcement came over the loudspeaker. Evidently somewhere nearby there had been a suicide and our train wasn't going any further. Everyone was to leave the train. After some thought we decided the best bet would be to go to the opposite platform and catch a train back to base and at least try the other route. We soon learned that that wasn't possible either as trains had been stopped in both directions. Some of our fellow passengers were most put out, but at least for us it wasn't too big an inconvenience.

    We then headed up to street level and found that we weren't all that far from the Montparnasse area where we'd stayed on our first visit and which we knew to be attractive. However our dramas weren't totally over. As we emerged we saw several TV cameras set up near the entrance, with outside broadcast vans, and large numbers of police and other characters milling round. Evidently, a huge day of union protests at Emmanuel Macron's labour reforms was about to start, and this area seemed to be a focal point. We decided to move right along, and knowing that the beautiful Jardin du Luxembourg was only a short distance away, we headed there, picking up some fruit (including a punnet of Brian's obligatory raspberries and Mary's obligatory grapes) for our lunch. It had been a long time since we'd eaten so healthily so, as well as being very tasty, the fresh fruit helped us ease our consciences.

    We'd spent half a day on our previous trip enjoying the gardens and were happy to return there on this warm sunny day. It was great, and looking extra good as the autumn colours were starting to appear. Both of us even managed a short nap in the sun. From there we took a wander up to the Pantheon, which we hadn't seen before, but decided just to admire it from the outside rather than pay the entry fee. We did however visit the nearby church of Sainte Genèvieve. It was certainly well worth it. From there, we wandered through the Latin Quarter and down to the Jardin des Plantes, where we managed to get ourselves thoroughly disorientated and lost. We weren't so homesick that we needed a fix, but in our travels we wandered past a section of the Menagerie where a couple of dozen wallabies were happily grazing on lush green grass, a diet probably more flavoursome than they would have enjoyed back home.

    It was late afternoon by then, and we were becoming footsore and weary, so we decided to find a Metro station and head back to base. In a final burst of energy, Brian then decided that we would explore the other route for getting ourselves to Gare Montparnasse. This would require us to change trains at La Motte-Picquet station, but when we saw just how many flights of steep stairs that was going to entail, we soon decided that the Concorde option would be the better one. One can but hope that there won't be any other such disruptions to our best-laid plans when we're carrying our luggage.

    We'd certainly earnt ourselves a relaxing drink by that time, so decided to head across the road from the hotel to the cafe where we'd been enjoying our breakfasts. It turned out that they run a happy hour (well, five hours, actually) from 5pm each night, so we enjoyed a half-litre of good beer and a glass of genuine champagne together with a bowl of nibbles for the grand total of ten euros - very cheap by Parisian standards. We sat in the sun at a small table on the footpath watching the world go by and thinking about the great unplanned day we'd just had.
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