{"id":9844,"date":"2017-10-15T13:16:15","date_gmt":"2017-10-15T13:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=9844"},"modified":"2017-10-17T10:00:19","modified_gmt":"2017-10-17T10:00:19","slug":"saturday-14th-october-2017-despite-the-fact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=9844","title":{"rendered":"Saturday 14th October 2017 – DESPITE THE FACT …"},"content":{"rendered":"

… that the hotel was not as quiet as I would have liked when I returned from the football, I was dead to the world all through the night until the alarm went off this morning.<\/p>\n

And I wasn’t alone either.<\/p>\n

I was on my travels last night with a couple of young girls and we were nipping about from island to island something like as if we were out on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Yes, I know where I would much rather be right now.<\/p>\n

I had some things to do on the laptop of course and then I stuck myself under the shower. Yes, I quite like this hotel.<\/p>\n

The next problem was to find my prescription. As you might remember, I could only obtain half of the stuff that I needed at the chemists. But despite having a really good search of my affairs, I couldn’t find the things. In the end, I just went out for bread at the Moroccan bakers across the road and that was that.<\/p>\n

With a couple of minutes to go, I turned out my affairs yet again and there they were – in the wrong pocket of the backpack. And then we had the confusion about trying to find the key to the room, which I had had in my hand not five minutes ago.<\/p>\n

I dashed over to the chemists across the road but it was an old prehistoric place run by an old prehistpric woman and there was no chance of her having the stuff in stock.<\/p>\n

She assured me that there was a chemist on the Gare du Midi but could I find it? I had a good look around but I couldn’t see it anywhere. In the end I gave up and went to pick up my ticket for the train.<\/p>\n

\"TGV<\/a>As luck would have it, there was a seat available on the earlier train at 10:13. It would cost me \u20ac29:00 extra as there’s no Senior Citizens discount on that train, but Senior Citizens discount is available in First Class and that would cost me \u20ac30:00 with a free breakfast included. <\/p>\n

High time that I spoilt myself a little, and the carrot cake was delicious.<\/p>\n

And here’s a surprise. Dragging my oversize suitcase off the train, a passing policeman asked me if he could carry it for me. That’s a first, sin’t it?
<\/p>\n

It took a while to find the ticket office in the Metro at the Gare du Nord, In the end I located a ticket machine and it was reasonably straightforward to obtain a ticket. It’s the line 4 southwards from there that takes me all the way to the Gare Montparnasse. <\/p>\n

But struggling through the automatic gates with the suitcase was something – the suitcase made it through but I was trapped. Nevertheless I managed to fight my way out.<\/p>\n

There was a train pulling into the platform just as I arrived so I was able to wedge myself in a corner with my bags right by the door. A handy little place to be where I can just fall out of the door when we arrive.<\/p>\n

I don’t remember the route from the Metro to the railway station being as complicated as it turned out to be. About four flights of stairs to negotiate with no lift, ramp or escalator either. <\/p>\n

\"escalators<\/a>And then the climb up to the railway station itself involved several flights of stairs going upwards. This time there were some escalators, but only for people travelling down.<\/p>\n

And I’m still trying to work that one out.<\/p>\n

Having picked up the ticket from the machine I could make my way right across to the fartherst part of the station complex – the platforms at Vaugirard where my train should be waiting. And with me being an hour early, and being in possession of some bread and vegan cheese, I could make myself some butties.
<\/p>\n

\"sncf<\/a>There was quite a crowd of people waiting for the train – in fact, it was quite full. But it was a pleasant run through the Saturday afternoon sunshine. I had plenty to do on the return trip, but I dozed for most of the journey.<\/p>\n

And I ran out of stuff to drink too. That was something of a tragedy and no mistake.<\/p>\n

The one problem with the local buses is that no-one in the town seems to know how to organise a timetable correctly. The buses run every 50 minutes, and I don’t have a problem with that, especially as it only costs \u20ac1:00 a trip, but when the train arrives at 17:03, what’s the point of having the buses arrive at 16:53, meaning that you have to wait 40 minutes for the next one?<\/p>\n

But apart from that, the whole thing is quite painless and by 18:15 I was back in my apartment having a coffee.<\/p>\n

Despite everything that I needed to do, I couldn’t keep going. I was in bed by 20:30 and that was that. The whole thing has taken far too much out of me.<\/p>\n

But as Barry Hay once famously said – “Something I gotta tell you, man – it’s good to be back home”.<\/p>\n

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… that the hotel was not as quiet as I would have liked when I returned from the football, I was dead to the world all through the night until the alarm went off this morning. And I wasn’t alone either. I was on my travels last night with a couple of young girls and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[162,3,7527,44,4507,1616,7526,8629,8571,8481,1308,1317],"tags":[3059,1673,199,7528,1302,2560,5565,8351,8631,7414,8581,8482,1343,1311,8594,5211,7891,2380,1315,5486],"class_list":["post-9844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-belgium","category-brussels","category-brussels-midi","category-dream","category-eric-hall-2","category-france","category-gare-du-nord","category-gare-montparnasse-vaugirard","category-granville","category-hotel-midizuid","category-paris","category-tgv","tag-barry-hay","tag-belgium-2","tag-brussels-2","tag-bruxelles-midi","tag-crash-out","tag-eric-hall","tag-france","tag-gare-du-midi","tag-gare-du-montparnasse-vaugirard","tag-gare-du-nord","tag-granville","tag-hotel-midi-zuid","tag-metro","tag-paris-2","tag-paris-vaugirard","tag-pharmacy","tag-place-darmes","tag-sncb","tag-sncf","tag-tgv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9844"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9854,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9844\/revisions\/9854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}