Day 14 - Beaulieu to Paris by train - May 14th



Are you sure this is the right platform?



Somehow or other, we were split into two groups for the trip to Paris, with one group down for a 10:30am and the others down for an 11:30am train ride to Paris, with the first group having to either stop or change at Lyon, with both trains arriving in Paris within about ten minutes of each other.  We were in group 2 and after a leisurely breakfast, made our way to Nice, forming  a protective ring around Chrissie to save her being a repeat victim of the gang of train pickpockets.

All was good and with Dave & Jo, we settled for a coffee, after a fire alarm had the station evacuated for a few minutes.  Somehow, the others didn’t arrive at the buffet or even the same platform.  We had witnessed an earlier Paris train leaving from our platform, so were confident we were still OK, until about ten minutes before departure, a feeling of unease settled in.  Jo shot off to check and returned with wildly waving arms, that we were on the wrong platform, so we dragged our luggage up to the correct platform to find the rest of our group sitting comfortably in their allocated seats, not at all concerned that we hadn’t shown up!

We had an hilarious ride though, especially after receiving a text message from the other train that they were delayed 30 mins and then had another message to say they had broken down altogether.  There was much joking that we’d wave at them as we passed, until we stopped (Antibes?) and saw them waiting on the platform!

Many of them piled into the upper deck of our carriage and they all got in OK, hence many questions being asked as to why we had been split up in the first place and also why we had to pay a substantial surcharge for the rail journey.  

Someone in this pic has been eating too much pasta
 by the looks of things.



Once in Paris, we somehow lost a group of five before we’d left the station, as we found out when we got to the coach. They eventually turned up and we had a pleasant ride to the Hotel Cardinale, where once again, we couldn’t park the bus outside, as it was a tiny dead end street.

We had to hand over our passports for photocopying before they would issue room keys.  Our room was street side and rather on the small side but with small balcony.  Several others complained that their rooms were exceptionally small.  Once again, the a/c wasn’t working but there was an in room fridge and a decent TV, but fewer channels than some of the other hotels - and nothing in English this time, not even CNN news.

We ate across the main street in the “Theatre Bar” and it was a pleasant enough meal, but nothing spectacular. Considering most foreigners berate the English food, or to be more precise, food available in England, of all our meals to date, only the Maranello steak stood out as being anything out of the very, very ordinary.  Of the three or 4 pasta carbonaras I have eaten so far, none were particularly memorable, including tonight's.

Bed was a respectable 11pm, but we are not expecting good weather for the day of the inauguration of the new French President tomorrow, but we have decided we’ll do the HOHO bus along with several others anyway, fully expecting a degree of disruption with police and soldiers everywhere.