Paris Day 1
Today was a travel day. Breakfast at the Staunton Hotel
in London. Taxi to the Waterloo Rail station to get on
the Eurostar train to Paris. Under the Chunnel Tunnel.
It was a little disappointing because we were supposed to
be able to go 300km/hr in northern France, but due to
“technical difficulties” (never explained) we were limited
to 220km/hr about 130mphr instead of 180mph. We were
only 15 minutes late arriving so not sure how much we were
impacted. The ride was very smooth and fast. The service
was very good. The train cars were configured with half
the seats facing one way and half the other. Janet doesn’t
like to ride backwards and our assigned seats were in that
half of the car so we ended up not riding together. It
appeared that most of the other people preferred riding
forward also since the forward seats were all filled and
only half the backward facing seats were occupied.
After considering riding the Metro (subway in Paris) to
our hotel we decided to take a taxi since there were
a number of stairs to traverse and we had quite a bit of
luggage on rollers but it is hard to go up and down stairs
and through the security gates. (width issue).
We are checked into our hotel de Lutece on St. Louis en l’ile
(the island just north of Notre Dame) and have joined the
locals in wandering about the island looking at all the
little stores and their wares. We plan to dine tonight at
our favorite restaurant on the Island. We call it the
“moo cow” since it is entirely decorated with cows. I will
find out it’s real name for a future journal.
The weather here today was clear sunny and warm. There
is scattered rain in the forecast but the temperature is
actually warmer than in London. It is forecast to be in
the low 60s or higher for the next week with some scattered
rain. I see that Boulder is forecast to be nice through
Friday but then it is supposed to snow on Saturday!
If you want to see pictures later – I will put them
on www.kenswitzer.com (click on news)
More about Paris tomorrow!
kws
Night Picture of The Staunton Hotel – (if you look closely you can see
Janet peeking around a post)
Daytime picture of the Staunton Hotel in London
Picture of Northern French country side from Eurostar
reymatter
Picture of front of Hotel de Lutece in Paris.