An early start. After considerable discussion as to which suitcase to take, we took the Metro to the Montparnasse station. It was a good thing that we settled on a wheeled case as the walk from the Metro to Les Grandes Lignes seemed endless. After a cup of tea and a walk around the station, we boarded our train and were off to Bordeaux. The train reaches speeds of over 300 km per hour but unless you focus out of the window on something nearby, you are hardly aware of the speed. That is, unless you are running parallel to a motorway. Then you whiz past cars travelling at top speed as if they are standing still. The distance from Paris to Bordeaux is just about 600 km. The trip takes three hours. This means an average speed of 200 km an hour. In line with my comment about the French's love affair with technology, the gentleman in an adjoining seat spent the whole trip working on his computer, talking on his mobile phone or reading in his electronic book.
The countryside is very green and, at the moment, very wet. We have had rain every day in Paris for at least the last week and the forecast for Bordeaux is for rain for the remainder of this week. Oddly enough, England is currently in very worrying draught conditions.
We arrived in Bordeaux and after some difficulty got a cab to our hotel. The driver was an arrogant grouch. You can see how pessimists would draw their conclusions about the French from the occasional brush with people like that. Optimists would say, "this is the exception - not the rule." Fortunately we are optimists and find the great majority of the French to be kind, helpful and very nice people.
The hotel is quite old and each room is done up differently. After checking in we went for a short walk. We found a square with hundreds of shopping stalls and wandered through there before walking into the centre of this stunningly beautiful town. It is very up-market with all of the well-known shops.
A very good dinner and an early night so that we would be fighting fit for tomorrow when we take on Bordeaux.
No comments:
Post a Comment