Day 1 - The Journey to France

Saturday 4th April 2009

After some careful planning and research we had decided on the best route to take to Heathrow. Damn tube seems to always have the lines we need closed for maintenance and we have to find alternative routes. Our journey was planned, but we decided to leave a little earlier than needed so we don't get all stressed out if something comes up (see Spain blog). First train change at West Ham. This is where we found a lovely black man that just wanted a penny for some milk, then a chat about the state of the city, and how it needs to be improved for 2012 Olympics. He was so London proud; although he is exactly the kind of riff raff the city needs to clean up. From here it was into London to jump on the Liverpool line out to Heathrow. No problems at all, just as planned. This now meant because we left a little earlier that we had a LOT longer to wait before we could get on our plane. We were happy to just have a look in the duty free shops and sit around. That filled the first hour; we then had to kill another hour of waiting time. Thank god for the DS and 'Twilight". I was ploughing through this exciting book and thought it would be best to purchase the second one in the series, 'New Moon' before heading off to France.

We boarded the little Air France plane, and was quickly up in the air. The flight attendants were very efficient in getting everyone drinks and snacks. No wonder, we were only in the air for no more than 40 minutes. The taxiing between terminals at Heathrow and Charles De Gaulle was the longest part of the whole thing. Straight off the plane to passport control, where the enthusiastic man just flipped to a page in our passports, glanced and waved us though, all the time continuing his conversation with his colleague. And again, not a soul to be seen in customs - I should've taken that job as a drug mule - I'd never have been caught!

The trains were quite easy to find in the airport, but figuring out what machine we needed to buy a ticket was confusing. Finally sorted, we took our two little tickets and the receipt and went down to catch the train. The train was quite possibly the dirtiest, most disgusting and graffiti covered thing I have even seen in my life. I didn't want to take a deep breath because I was afraid of what diseases I could catch if I did. No wonder there was hardly anyone else on it. The 40-minute trip went pretty quickly though and when we arrived at Gare du Nord, I was not surprised to see the other guy getting off, covering his finger with his shirt to press the button to open the door. We'd decided that we would walk from the station to our hotel, instead of jumping on a metro train for 3 or 4 stops. When we were trying to exit the station, by putting in our train tickets to make the gates open, Dan made it through fine, but I was putting in my ticket and the gates weren't opening. I tried upside down, and round all the different ways but those gates just wouldn't open. So Dan is happily on the outside, and I'm stuck inside. Dan gave me his ticket, but I was sure that it wouldn't work cause it'd already been used as an exit, funnily enough the gates opened up using Dan's ticket and I was finally free. Dan then inspected my ticket out of curiosity, and discovered that I was actually using the receipt instead of the ticket. No wonder it didn't work. Der.

On walking out of the station I think we were approached by at least 20 people asking for money. Beggars just hung around everywhere. We had our map book and headed off to the hotel. Just don't let me navigate again, because we set off in the complete wrong direction. Dan had to take over and tell me where to walk (It turned out we had to walk past the station again and we were pestered again by beggars). The walk to our hotel was interesting; on the one street we passed at least 15 bridal shops, and 10 sex shops - they do say Paris is the city of love. Then we got to an area where on every corner there were a group of blokes trying to sell 'legitimate' packets of cigarettes. It was the dodgiest looking thing I have ever seen. I was glad it was still sunlight because if it had have been in the dark that we made this walk I would've been scared.

We found our hotel finally as we were checking in there was some loud laughing and banging and carrying on coming from upstairs. The guy who was checking us in excused himself then went up the stairs to the group of kids and explained in French something about "this place is no park Disneyland". Grumpy old fart. We were given our room key and told that the room was upstairs. Upstairs was completely dark. With the faint light that was coming from downstairs we managed to find what we thought was our room. The key worked luckily, and we walked into our sleazy, dodgy little hotel room. Lucky it was only for one night. We dropped the bags, freshened up and headed out for tea.

We were staying in Montmartre, pretty much at the bottom of the Sacre Cour, so finding somewhere to eat was not difficult. We were in the heart of tourist centre. It was late and we were hungry so stumbled into pretty much the first place we came across - again another pizzeria. I had an ordinary Calzone and Dan's pizza was ok. It was just nice to have something to eat - it had been a long time since lunch!!! After tea we just walked through the little streets of Montmartre and looked in all the tacky souvenir shops. We found a creperie, and we decided that now would be the best time to start on the French cuisine. Dan had nutella and banana and I had a caramel one. So so yum. The caramel was hot and gooey. I want more now just thinking about how good they were. We ate our crepes on the walk back to the hotel, it was well after 11 by the time we returned and were ready for some sleep. The noisy school group that were staying in our hotel had different plans for us though. The continual laughter and teenage carry on, carried quite loudly through the paper thin walls and combined with the loud traffic noise outside kept me awake most of the night ☹