There is an old joke about the four great nations of Europe that goes as follows:
"In heaven, the police are British, the chefs are French, the lovers are Italian, and the whole place is run by the Germans. In hell, the police are Italian, the chefs are British, the lovers are German, and the whole place is run by the French".
After today, I can report that the joke is dead-on about the French. We started the day with a bike ride through Hyde Park to burn some calories for dinner in Paris. This was pleasant and pretty, but I still prefer FoPo to Hyde Park. While the Serpentine is lovely and filled with gorgeous swans, the roads in Hyde Park are used by motoring commuters, and the paths by cycling ones. As a result, you don't get the sense of being in an urban oasis like you do in the middle of Forest Park. After we got back, it was time to pack up and head for King's Cross-St. Pancras to board the Eurostar (but not before stopping to take a picture at Platform 9 3/4).
The Eurostar is a marvelous train. You blast through the British and French countryside at 186 mph, reaching Paris in just over 2 hours (imagine that time for the trip between STL and Chicago, and then write an angry letter to Claire McCaskill asking why the fuck we can't start building this right away). Unfortunately, all that time you save will be wasted in the clusterfuck that is Gare du Nord in Paris. This is the main train depot, and once we arrived at 4:47, we had 3 simple tasks to do. We needed to get an EURail pass for me, buy a Paris Museum pass, and then get a weekly Metro pass. Here is what happened instead.
We got sent to four different counters to finally get the EURail pass, at a different price than was quoted by the first guy.
We got the last Paris Museum passes sold that day before the information office closed at 5:30 (there were still plenty of trains arriving).
The Metro pass requires a passport photo, and the first photo booth I tried to use refused to take cash or credit.
The second one refused to take cash, despite having a slot for it.
Only one ticket office was open for the entire station. It was staffed by two people who spoke nothing but French (despite the fact that trains arrived from all over Europe every hour).
The gentleman who issued our metro cards didn't activate them the first time, necessitating a 15 minute wait for them to be activated.
There were also a few other niggling issues here not worth mentioning, but when you add up all of these snafus, we spent as much time in Gare du Nord then we spent getting there. If you want to do Europe by train, don't be stupid like me and buy your EURail pass in time to have it shipped to you.
After much headbanging and broken French, we made it to the apartment we're staying in (airbnb is the shit), and it was time to eat. Fortunately, the French are amazing at this. We went to a cafe called Verse Toujours ("Pour Again"), and got a table outside. I got a sandwich and my mom got a salad. Both were fantastic, my mom's salad being especially tasty. For dessert, we split a molten chocolate cake that was the best molten chocolate cake I have ever had. I got a coffee that came with a merengue cookie that melted in my mouth and was amazing. I was pissed off at France before I ate, but the food fixed that. Tomorrow, we are off to the Louvre.
No comments:
Post a Comment