France Day 4: Paris (June 20, 2012)

I got up a little earlier today and we were all packed and ready to go at about 9 AM but checkout wasn’t until 10 AM and our train for Paris didn’t leave until 11:40 AM.  So we spent some time trying to figure out how to get to our hotel in Paris from the train station.

We walked to the train station in  Bayeux.  It is about a 15 minute walk but we stretched it out to a 45 minute walk or something like that.  My bags are heavier than Angela’s and we had plenty of time so we stopped to rest a couple of times.  We sat and had a snack at the half way point.

After we had been sitting on the platform at the station for a few minutes, the owner of the hotel where we had been staying came running up to us.  We had forgotten to give him the key to our room.  I had in it my jacket pocket.  I put it there so I could carry my bags down the stairs and then we paid for the room and forgot to give him the key.  It was a real key – not a credit card key.  And the custom here in France is to leave your key at the reception desk when you leave the hotel and then pick it up when you come back.  Anyway, the poor man seemed frazzled and grateful that he found us with the key.  We apologized but laughed about it afterward.  Poor man!  I feel bad that he had to come all the way to the train station just for the key.

The journey to Paris was pretty uneventful.  I fell asleep on the train and apparently was doing some entertaining head nodding.  Angela didn’t take any pictures but when I woke up after hitting my head against the window she was heartily laughing at me.

We found our hotel with out any trouble and there are a few really great things about it.  There is a lot of light.  I have never stayed in a hotel where there is so much light.  And there is an elevator.  Our room is on the 4^th floor and I am so grateful that we didn’t have to carry our luggage up 4 flights of stairs.  The elevator is very small we barely squished ourselves and our small suitcases inside.  It is a 2 person max elevator.  But it is an elevator none the less and I am grateful.

We entered our room and dropped on the bed.  It is considerably warmer in Paris than it was in Normandy.  We slept for an hour or so and then got up and went the the grocery store to scrounge up some dinner.  

After we ate we went to the Eiffel Tower.  It was a lovely evening.  We can easily walk to the Eiffel Tower from our hotel.  We took the stairs to the second story and then took the elevator to the top (the only way to the top).  We took lots of picture and when we came down it was about 9PM so the sun wasn’t setting but it was low in the western sky and quite lovely.

 The every ten or so steps there is a number indicating how many you have gone.  This is the top step of the Eiffel Tower.  We made it to the top!

We came home and I ate again then we wrote in our journals, looked up some gluten free stores and restaurants on-line and then had our picture sharing.