Interrail Europe 2002

Day Two (Tues 15th) - The plan goes out the window.

We got up at about 8am and went for breakfast, we had a bowl of cereal (labelled Corn Flackes), a bowl of hot chocolate (yes, a bowl), a bread roll and some jam. Not the most inspiring food but there was enough of it and it was free! Afterwards we went back to the room and packed ready to leave, where we got a chance to talk to the odd guy again. It turns out that he’s Bulgarian and he spent the next half-hour telling Barrie and I that we should go to Eastern-Europe to find a wife. Apparently the girls are all like supermodels and they are all keen to marry a westerner, “you write to them one year, you visit them the next, then you write and tell them you like their sister – their younger sister”. Despite his skilful sales technique we were both left unconvinced. Shortly before we left, the Bulgarian pulled a violin out of his bag, took it into the bathroom and proceeded to play then as we were leaving he came out and tried to persuade us once more that we should go to Bulgaria to find a wife.

We headed for the train station and realised that we couldn’t get to Toulouse as we had planned so after much deliberation we decided that we’d have to abandon our south-coast route and we jumped on a TGV headed for Paris. We bumped into Song again who helped us buy our reservations, he’d been travelling for weeks already and had a good grasp of the railways. The journey was about six hours, I managed to negotiate the buffet car and Barrie met a guy called Romain who’d been in Biarritz making a documentary about body-boarding. We finally arrived at Paris Montparnasse station at about 4pm and jumped on a metro to Châtlet.

We headed for a cheap hotel we’d read about, unfortunately it was full so we checked a couple of others in the area and they were also full. After finding a few hotels we wandered around and consulted the Rough Guide, as it turns out we were only a couple of minutes away from a hostel so we headed straight there. The hostel belonged to the MIJE, one of several competing youth-hostel groups in France so our YHA cards were not valid, it only cost €2.5 each so we joined. The guy on the front-desk (called Christian) was extremely helpful and courteous, when we arrived he was dealing with another customer and told us to take a seat until he’d finished. One of our main concerns about being in Paris was security, a lot more people pass through the city than somewhere small like Biarritz, we wanted to share with as few people as possible.

In the end we were allocated a 7-bed room but we were given the beds on the upper-tier (basically in the attic) which was reached by a spiral staircase, there were only three beds up there and nobody was put in the third bed during our stay. Having been walking around the area for about a half-hour with 15kgs on our backs we were very pleased to find somewhere to stay, after dumping our stuff Barrie went for a cigarette and I chilled in the room. We sat around for about an hour reading the guidebooks and working out where we were going to eat.

We headed out of the hostel across Ile St Louis though Ile del la Cité (via Notre Dame) to a small vegetarian restaurant (La Grenier de Notre Dame), Barrie had readily agreed to try some veggie food and I don’t get the change to go to veggie restaurants often so it seemed like a good idea. As I am used to having a choice only two or three veggie options in most restaurants it took me ages to work out what I wanted from an entirely vegetarian menu, the one thing I jumped at was a fruit-juice cocktail which they make from fresh fruit. As we were eating we were talking about the upcoming Bonfire Night and possibly arranging for a group of people to go to a fireworks display, Barrie couldn’t remember the name of a town near St Albans beginning with ‘H’ and we were both surprised when a guy on the next table leaned in and said ‘Harpenden’. It turned out that the guy and his wife had come to Paris from St Albans, an odd coincidence that we all ended up in the same restaurant.

After eating far too much we just wandered aimlessly through the city to see what the place looked like at night, we got as far as Place de St Michel and headed back towards the hostel. We stopped for a drink in a bar called Feria Café and a supermarket to pick up some drink & snacks before returning to the hostel at about 10pm. We were both very tired from all the travelling and walking we’d done so we stayed in the hostel and read the guidebooks picking places to see on the following day.

Prev Main Next

Back to Thirtyfootscrew