Train Travel and Apartment Living

Monday May 9th

We arrived “home” to Paris yesterday afternoon after about six hours on the train from Nice. I really find train travel so much more convenient than air travel.  With train travel you only need to show up at the station about 20 minutes prior to your time of departure.  You wait for the track to be listed which occurs about 10 minutes before departure, walk over to your train, find the right car (which is listed on digital display outside each door) and board. Very simple.  There is plenty of storage space for luggage right inside the doors and the seats are large and roomy. You do need to make sure that you are on the right train though, as no one will check your ticket for you on boarding.  Yesterday it took several hours before they got around to checking our tickets!

The seats are probably six inches or so wider than airline seats, and the space from your seat to the seat in front of you is probably a foot more than in airlines!  You can put down the tray table and be perfectly comfortable without worrying that the person in front of you will recline and crush your laptop screen.  Katie settled in and watched a movie on the iPod and I did some writing on my research.  On the way to Nice we had a plug at our seats and I could connect my laptop and work the entire six hours.  This time there was no plug, but I still got in about three hours of work.

The distance from Nice to Paris is 570 miles, which would take about 8 hours driving at 70 mph with no stops, but we made it in six hours.  There was a dining car with snacks and drinks, and it was quite comfortable.   Despite my new love of train travel though, I think the environment in the US is not right for train travel though.  First, the US is so large that most train trips are prohibitively long, except in the eastern corridor of DC – Boston, where train travel is already common.  Plus, with most places you visit in the US, you need a car once you arrive, again with the exception of the large cities like DC, NYC and Boston.  But here in Europe it makes a lot of sense, and we have not found any need for a car yet. I was wondering how big France actually is, and according to what I found online, France is about 20% smaller than the state of Texas, with a population of 63 million people, whereas Texas has 24 million people.

It’s funny how you get settled into a place so quickly and it felt good to be back in our apartment in Paris after three days in Nice.  We have really enjoyed our apartment and have adjusted to the idiosyncrasies of Parisian life. For instance, we knew we were arriving back to Paris on a Sunday, so we made sure that we had enough food in the fridge for dinner because no groceries are open on Sunday. A frozen spinach quiche made a nice dinner.  We did our laundry and hung it to try using the techniques that my mom taught us for faster drying.  We have even adjusted to this no dryer life, which was hard at first.  Katie and I were talking this morning about continuing to hang our laundry to dry this summer at home to save energy.  Come winter though, I am happy we have dryers in the US!

There are several things though that are unusual here. First, the shower is tiny!  Seriously, you have to turn off the water wash your hair because there is no way out from under the spray otherwise.  The shower is a small square cube in a room with the washer and a sink. You have to exit the shower at an angle of the cube, and it is about an 18” high step off the ground.  As you pitch forward each time, wet and slippery I am afraid one of us is going to break our necks!  If you put your hands on your hips in the shower, both elbows will touch the walls!  After showering and getting out, Paul said “I don’t think my brother Peter would be able to get in and out of the shower here!” No offense to Peter, but he is a bit large in the belly and it would be a squeeze for him. I told my mom of Paul’s comment and her first response was “How mean!”, however, after showering she came up to me and said, “you know, I think Paul is probably right.”  Maybe that is why Parisians are all so thin, so they can take a shower. 

With all the walking here around town, and up and down five flights of stair to the apartment I think I have lost five pounds or so, which means that I can eat well when I get to Italy without any guilt!

You may have noticed that I didn’t mention a toilet in the shower room. That’s because it is in the hall closet.  Seriously, it’s a closet with a toilet. Your knees bump up against the door when you close it. This is my least favorite aspect of the apartment as I hate small closed in spaces.

The kitchen is a standard narrow apartment kitchen but does have a full size fridge and freezer as well as an over. You have to close the kitchen door to open the oven door, but it does work out. The living room is nicely sized with a table and a couch.  We don’t watch any French TV, but do watch TV over the internet on the laptop. The sofa is a pull-out, but Katie and I share a nice size bed in the bedroom instead.  The pullout is OK, but the bed is more comfy.  We even have a small balcony to hang our clothes to dry, or on which Katie curls up to read.

We have to walk to the grocery store, which is two blocks away and then carry home all our groceries.  We went this morning and brought home about three bags of groceries. You have to work hard to balance what you need right away with home much you can carry home and up five flights of stairs.  Katie had the bag with the milk, shampoo and wine today which was quite heavy.  But the milk only comes in liter size bottles so at least it wasn’t a gallon. 

We like trying different things from the French grocery but have settled into a few favorites: fresh quiche, chicken cordon blue (but in many different varieties, not just ham and cheese), and selections of great cheese including fondue. Tonight we are having baguette and cheese fondue.  Today Katie talked me into trying a granola cereal with chocolate pieces in it, and some odd looking donuts with what look like big salt crystals on them, but I think are sugar. I’m actually a little scared of those donuts. I’ll make Katie try them first.  (Update - they tasted fine. It was sugar!)

We have also tried some different ice creams, and currently have hazelnut in the freezer, which Katie derisively calls acorn ice cream. Not a big hit.  I think we should have gotten chocolate hazelnut, which would have been similar to Nutella.

Quiet day for us today, but tomorrow we plan to head to France’s largest indoor waterpark