Suitcase and World: May 2006

Thursday, May 4, 2006

Where have we been for the last two days?

We finally left Nice at headed out to Paris. We were organized enough to book the reservation two days in advance, so we didn’t encounter any trouble at the train station.

The trip to Paris was uneventful, and we finally arrived in the afternoon, under a sunny and warm sky. We found our hotel with the help of a cab, and dropped our suitcases there. We then bought some passes for the metro, and went to the place Julee has been talking about for DAYS: Le Bon Marche! It was indeed an amazing food store, where there had severals aisles for chocolate, cheese, and saucisses! Where else could you find such an amazing assortment? A few hundred dollars later, we finally left the store, and came back to the hotel.

Wednesday, May 3, 2006

The Cote d’Azur – Days 6 and 7


Greetings from the south of France!!

We arrived in Nice, on the train from Lyon, early Sunday evening. Trudging our suites off the train and out the front door of the train station, we patiently stood in line to wait for a cab. After a few minutes of waiting, a cab showed up and, to our utter surprise, he refused to take us to our hotel – telling us that the street that it was on was all torn up (for road repair) and that cars were not allowed on it. Neither of us had ever been rejected by a taxi cab driver so we were a bit dumbfounded by what we heard. We went to the Information Desk and Diep asked for directions to the hotel. We were told that is was about a half hour walk or we could take the bus. Being the adventurous twosome that we are, we opted to hoof it. Considering we had no map to guide us, we had to rely on the kindness of people to give us directions.

Monday, May 1, 2006

Lyon: We came, we saw, we vanquished! Day 5.

Greetings from France! We hope you are enjoying our adventures!

The only thing worth noting during our stay in Lyon was that we almost missed the train…. again! For once, this has nothing to do with our lack of planning! We went to station Perrache about an hour before our departure time to make sure we weren’t going to miss the train. From the station, we caught the train to the main station at Part-Dieux, and took less than 10 mins to get there. We were so proud of ourselves that for once, we had successfully executed the plan we hatched. We went to look at the departure announcement board, and I noticed that our train was going to be late by 15 minutes. I mentioned it to Julee, who, then had this panicked look as she pointed out frantically on our tickets that we had to switch trains, and that we had only 17 minutes to do so.