2003 July 6-8---Paris

The last city on Angie's and my 2 week trip around Europe.  It was a very busy 2 weeks.  We started in Prague  (where Angie had just completed a semester of school)  , then went to Ronchamp, Geneva, Rome, Cinque Terre, Barcelona, and now on to Paris for a couple days.  To check out our trip from the beginning, click HERE

July 6:

AFter spending a hectic day traveling all over Barcelona the day before, now it was time to head on to Paris---our final stop of our 2 week whirlwind trip. 
This was a full day of travel. We were up and at it early--about 7:30am. So early that we had about an hour to wait for the train. So we went to international reservations and reserved first class seats for the 2nd part of our train ride to Paris, the TGV out of Montpellier to Paris, for an additional fee of 3 Euro @ for reservations on a premium train. Angie went hunting for our breakfast. She did good---chocolate doughnuts and pineapple juice. We boarded the train about 8:30 and again were in a different configured first class train car. It would have been nice if the air conditioner in it hadn't gone out as soon as we left. Our 4 1/2 hour trip got VERY uncomfortable by the time we reached Montpellier, but there were no other seats available on the train(good thing we had made reservations the day before).

We made our connection for the TGV about 30 minutes after arriving in Montpellier and were off for another 4 hour trip to Paris. The TGV was very nice. It had a fold out table with seats facing each other. Angie and I sat on the side of the train with one seat facing each other. As on most of the other trains, there was a snack car where we were able to get some lunch.

I was surprised at how smooth the train travelled even though we were supposedly going in excess of 200m/h. The countryside was again lush with lots of farmlands. Looking out at a distance, it was really hard to tell we were going so fast. The only hint we got that we were going that fast was that the electric poles next to the tracks were just a blur as we went speeding by them.