Tuesday – Paris to Lyon

Although spent mostly travelling, Tuesday was a day of challenges for me… trying to cope in a country where I don’t really speak the language has turned out to be a great and fun experience !!!

Challenge #1….
getting through the airport using my recently acquired smattering of
Francais… amazingly with a few well placed Bonjours and Mercis, plus what was
probably a very stilted “Je viens d’Australia” and a “Deux semaines” to the
immigration officer and I was through without a single word of English.

Challenge #1 PASSED.

Charles de Gaulle
airport in Paris is fairly unimpressive… inside basically just a big concrete
hallway. Arriving at 7am it was pretty gray looking outside – France has had
Autumn hit pretty suddenly I’m told. The airport train system was pretty cool
though – jump on a small shuttle train that runs between the 3 terminals and
the carpark, and at terminal 1 they have a Metro and TGV station.

Challenge #2…. finding
where to buy a ticket to Lyon, then getting something for breakfast and finding
the right platform.

So… the now
comfortable bonjour’s et merci’s, and an “un billet pour Lyon Part-Dieu sil
vous plait” took care of the first one….breakfast worked well too…. “un
crossaint et un bouteille d’evian svp”… and finally “ou est la train pour
Lyon Part-Dieu svp”… and I was done. 

Challenge #2 PASSED – Teacher would be proud !!! 

(Note to Mike
– I owe you several beer’s I reckon… feel free to print out this blog post and redeem at a time of your choosing 😉 )

Now all you good reader’s out there have heard
how the trains in Paris NEVER run late, yes ??? Well although the train system is excellent, it’s just not true !!! 

The reason I know this is that my
TGV was 50 minutes late arriving due to a problem with the train ahead
of it. Surprisingly to me though, they announced in both Francais and English that as an apology every passenger was
entitled to a fare reduction on their next journey…. and to make sure everyone knew, they put staff at the exit points on the platform handing out "how to claim your reduction" information. So… although the trains might
sometimes run late, but with a business model like that it can’t happen too
often !!!

TGV if you don’t know stands for Train a Grand
Vitesse, which means “Very Fast Train”… and yup – they’re right. Up to as
much as 300km/h apparently… though you can’t tell from the ride inside
them. As beautiful and interesting as the countryside is out the window,
man it rushes by pretty quickly !!! It has to… the TGV I was on did the 425km
from Paris to Lyon in 1 hr 40 minutes, including a 3 minute stop at a station
along the way… how does 262km/h grab you for an everage speed ???

The hotel that I am in is quite close to the train station in Lyon, but wouldn’t you know it… NONE of my French resources prepared me for the phrase "I’d like to check in please". Luckily the hotel receptionist speaks English quite well, so the final challenge overcome it was off to my room to try and make myself feel human again after all the travelling.