Sunday, December 27, 2009

From Mom:

Bonjour tout le monde,

My English is going fast, fast…. We haven’t had one minute to type since the day we arrived on the 23rd. Would you like to go back in time with me?

I met Barbara in the Washington DC Red Carpet Lounge at Dulles airport. We took off 30min late for our 3rd stop to our adventure: Geneva. The flight attendants could speak French but my accent would have been soooo much better. We arrived in Geneva after 8 hours of a very uneventful flight. I have seen “Elf” 2 times now and I am ready to forget it for good until next year.

Barbara and I were very disappointed to see the green fields and the lakes!!! We did not stay very long in Geneva but just long enough to find the best little restaurant/coffeshop just in front of Lac Leman. Geneve was not cold as we thought it would be. The watch stores and the chocolate stores were everywher. Guess where we went? We just said “good bye” to Geneve. We’ll be back next week.

Once in the train to Paris, we went in the bar in the train singing “Snow, snow, snow” from “White Christmas”. Where was the snow playground of Europe? The trip to Paris in the train was fine. We had a window seat but the view was obstructed by half of the wall of the train!!!!! Barbara slept a little but we got to Paris fast and then it happened………

At Gare de Lyon in Paris we were very excited. Two more stops and we would arrive at Dany’s and a warm bed. From la Gare de Lyon we opted to walk to go to Gare d’Austerlitz. We were so wise. A concert of traffic horns, a crowed of cars and a sea of people welcomed us for our first step in Paris. It was beautiful. The sky was pink/red/navy/black. The air was brisk, the smell, well, the smell was very Parisian. After 10min. of a quick walk we arrived at Gare d’Austerlitz!!!!!

Bienvenue a Paris. The day before we arrived, an accident occurred on one of the main tracks causing delays on all the tracks. http://www.ouest-france.fr/actu/actuDet_-Deraillement-du-RER-C.-L-automobiliste-positif-au-cannabis-et-a-la-cocaine-_39382-1202748_actu.Htm

It was not a sea of people anymore. It was an ocean of people waiting for the next train.!!!!! After a while we decided to go to another train station to take another train. We had to find the metro (subway) to take us to a different part of town at Gare Montparnasse with 10,000000 more people. My heart stopped when all of the sudden, the metro stalled in the middle of the tunnel and the lights went off.!!!!! No, no, no, no. Barbara and I started to laugh nervously when a drunk gentleman decided to tell every body in the train his miserable life and some other facts that we did not understand very well. What a relief when, the metro started again and we reached our destination.

I must warn you there are only stairs in the metro and we now have longer arms from carrying our heavy bags up and down the steps!!!! We caught the train to Chartres just in time and breathed happily. One more hour and we will be with the family. There is no more snow anywhere.

At the Geneva train station




















Cute coffeeshop called Cottage in front of the lake.














Massive Toblerone bar. It cost over 150 USD. We wanted it.



















Gare de Lyon at night in Paris














Barbara on the last train!
































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































1 comment:

  1. great pix and stories, ladies !! so nice to share your adventure :)

    ReplyDelete