paris part one

ok, so as of a week or so ago, our trip has taken new path. as you read in the previous post, we've bought bikes, saddle bags, a tent and some (surprisingly good) blow up mattresses. we've planned to do some camping in between hostels and the like, because it is very very expensive to stay in france and italy as there aren't many hostels (in france mainly) so you have to book a hotel. for example, the hotel we booked in paris cost €60 a night, and the camp ground in paris cost us €60 for four nights! so camping is the way to go. before ange tell you how its all going in france, i must tell you the story of how we got to paris.

so we got our tickets from the lady who didn't have a clue what we were saying, so we were hoping that we had the right ones. all in all we had about 10 separate tickets, some to put on our bikes for each trip and some for us. to get from berlin to paris, we had to take this route: berlin to kassel hoff, kassel hoff to kosch, kosch to paris. it takes four hours to get from berlin to kassel hoff, four hours to get to kassel hoff to kosh, a six hour wait in the station and 6 hours to get from kosch to paris. it was going to be bout 20 hours travel time. we could get back home in nearly that time! so we psyched ourselves up for a long trip with little sleep.

we were to get the first train at 10:30am, so we got up in enough time to get to the station. it took a lot longer to walk there than we thought, so we were really pushing the time when we arrived. i then realised that i'd left our awesome lock for the bikes at kelly and prues, and we didnt have enought time to go and get it, so ange ran off trying to find a lock because we weren't sure what to expect security wise on the trains. the only problem was that it was 10:20 when she left, therefore right on 10:30 when she got back. we had no luck with getting a lock, and ange was starting to get quite stressed.. i could tell by the panicked look and the slight twitch in her left eye.. we went into commando mode and flew through the station to find the train. we were the last ones left on the platform, and they were yelling at us to get on. only we had no idea where to put our bikes, so we went up to a conductor looking man and showed him our tickets and he said to go to the other end of the train "shnell!" which means quick! so we raced down there and were confronted by a scary short lady who wasn't pleased that we were running late. she asked for our tickets, and ange opened the ticket folder she was holding and we both just about vomited when we saw there were no tickets. this of course was impossible because we'd just shown them to the man a second ago! we looked back and saw one lone ticket on the platform, and summised that they had fallen out our in our mad dash. ange ran back to get the ticket and look for the others while i tried to reason with the scary lady. ange came back with the one ticket and the lady just yelled at us to get on the train. so ange tried to get her bike up the stairs, but got stuck. everything then caught up with her, and she burst into tears half hanging out of the train. in seeing this i tried to help get the bike on the train while still trying to explain that the tickets were there a moment ago. the train driver then came out of his cabin next door and started to help pull the bike on, and then ange accidentally dropped her big bag off the train. the only problem was that she dropped her bag right on top of the scary short lady. so at this moment, i'm picking up anges bag off the platform, apologising, the lady is fixing her glasses and looking disgusted, ange is having a breakdown on the train, and the driver is standing there, holding the bike, looking like he wished he was anywhere but there. so we finally got everything on the train, but we still had the problem of having no tickets. i tried to speak german, but all i know is "nein, das ist mein hamburger!" which wasnt going to help us.

when she saw ange crying, the lady softened a little, and wasnt yelling at us anymore. she told us to go and sit down, and thankfully we had our eurail tickets which helped. she still wanted our other tickets though. she then left to do her rounds, and we were given some breathing space. ange had calmed down, and i was freaking out that we had no tickets for the whole trip and how were we going to communicate this to the ticket inspectors and why should they believe us? then about an hour in, the lady simply walked past, and handed ange a wad of paper. now it was my turn to get a tad teary as we realised that it was our tickets! the man that we had asked at the start had seen us drop them and taken them onto the train. geez! we went and found the scary lady who wasnt so scary anymore, and gave her one of the little koala bears that we bought with us. she was very chuffed. it was nice that we could communicate to say thankyou even though we couldn't speak each other's language.

the rest of the trip through the various stops in germany was, thankfully, very uneventful. the 6 hour wait from 7pm till 1am was a killer, but we survived. about half an hour till our train was leaving, we thought we'd be smart and get on the train early. when we got up there we realised that everyone had had this idea, and the train was chock-a-block. to make matters worse, it was a gross smelly train, and you had to go in cabins with other people who had all taken their shoes off! we opened door after door on sleeping people to try and find a seat, because our designated seats were being slept on by someone who refused to get off and slammed the door on us. the only cabin we could find that had room had one man in it, so we asked if we could sit there, he said yes and we walked in. big mistake. it smelled so bad, which was possibly his feet, and to top it off, he was smoking inside the cabin, which was tiny. when you've been travelling for a very long time with no sleep, its easy to get irritated by little things..

six hours later, we arrived in paris...

... and walked out of the train station looking super excited (well, as excited as one can look after a crappy overnight train) only to be spat at by a creepy man. lovely. we walked down the street and found our hotel. i walked in and asked if we could leave our bags there until check in time. the desk man was quite rude until i produced our booking sheet, at which point he decided he was my best friend. we left our bags there and set off with the map i stole from the tour guide from the start of our trip. we rode down a few random streets and found a patisserie. we couldnt resist the delicious looking pain au chocolats, so we asked (in our best attempt at french) for some, and the lady seemed to understand us. woohoo! we continued riding and ended up at the louvre. it was awesome. picture this: riding from the seine through the gates and seeing the sun hit the louvre (and the random glass triangle) and its all shiny AND there was NO ONE around! it was 8 oclock and the louvre opens at 9, so we missed the tourists.

but, we didnt miss the traffic. after we'd walked our bikes through les jardins tuleries we found ourselves smack bang in peak hour traffic on the Champs-Élysées. it seemed like like a nice easy ride from the bottom, but when we got to the top and looked down our jaws hit the road. we'de ridden two kilometres up a cobblestone street that was packed with cars. it was one of the most scary moments of my life! we took photos of the arc de triomphe before setting off in search of the eiffel tower. we could see the top, we just needed to find a way there. we turned a corner and bam! there it was. we were on the opposite side of the seine, overlooking the eiffel tower and paris. we got delicious overpriced pretend-nutella crepes and coffee with cream in it (CREAM!?!?!?!?) and sat down to breakfast number two watching paris wake up. there were a few early rising tourists about, but not enough to distract the men selling little eiffel towers (you buy, you buy, three for one euro - special price, just for you!) and every single one tried to sell us them. i was happy to pretend i didnt speak french OR english and enjoy the crepe and the view, but jess got more and more angry. which, in turn resulted in them trying to provoke her more. hilarious, from my angle, but dont tell jess i said that.

we rode to st germain de-pres to check out the shopping and it was there we had our first ham and cheese crepes. that was the turning point where we knew that we would eat nothing else in paris. until, for lunch number two jess, had yet another crepe, this time with REAL nutella. uh oh. this was swedish soft-serve all over again! every morning for the rest of paris there was no "good morning, ange!" but "WAKE UP! lets go get crepes!"

at 2pm we rode back to the hotel and crashed. we slept for 24 hours straight! no more overnight trains for us! we woke up refereshed and eager to explore paris some more...

... but its getting late so we'll tell you about that next time!