First Impressions

Riding in economy seating on an airplane is never comfortable, and our flight proved to be just short of miserable. When we left DFW Saturday afternoon the sun was still up and exiting the plane in Paris Sunday morning the sun was there to meet us. Somehow on that 8 hr flight we managed to skip the entire night, which turned out ok since none of us got any sleep anyways.

Passport control went fast and we found ourselves in the middle of the Charles de Gaulle airport without a clue where to go next. It was as if we were standing in the middle of an airport in an unknown location where everyone spoke a foreign language…

…oh, yeah. 

We were as lost as a bunch of blind Canadian geese that took a wrong turn in Albuquerque. 

We followed the crowds and the pictures on the signs until we found an information booth where we were informed that the train station at the airport was out of order. With a fair amount of additional frustration we managed to get tickets, board a bus to the nearest train station and then successfully board the train to the Paris North Train station where we were to catch a high speed train to Zurich.

The experience at the airport left us a bit frazzled. Aside from the lack of communication the airport was large and required a lot of walking. And then there were stairs everywhere, lots of them. The train station was a maze of stair wells with no ramps or escalators. The ADA would have a fit here. 

The scenery on the train ride into town was less than interesting. We passed miles of old buildings, warehouses and factories and all of it, including the trees and vegetation looked exactly like it would anywhere in the US. It wasn’t until we reached the main train station when the first glimpse of Paris emerged.

We arrived at the train station 4 hours ahead of our scheduled departure so we took a detour to a local cafe for breakfast. Most of us decided on brunch which included toast, eggs, a croissant, coffee and another kind of bread. Three different kinds of bread. John and Larry both ordered something else and both their meals came with french fries. There’s probably some kind of joke in there about eating french fries in France but I’m too tired to come up with it right now. Now that I’m thinking about it would all the bread and toast that came with brunch technically be French toast?

We arrived at the train station still with 2 1/2 hours till departure and we discovered there was an earlier train which we could take for a $60 transfer fee per ticket. The decision was unanimous, so we found a chocolate shop, a bathroom and someplace to sit for a two hour wait.