While packing and preparing for my drive this week, I thought about the transportation that we experienced in France. Europe has one of the best, most efficient train systems in the world. In fact, 70% of Europeans do not even own a car. Why bother, especially if you have the Metro or a train station so conveniently close by? When we were in France, we use the trains between Paris, Tours, Lyon, and Nice. It was surprisingly cheap! It only cost $11 for one First-Class ticket. The First Class cars were very nice- plush, red velvet seats with tables to play cards or use your laptop on. We used both kinds of trains in France: the TGV and the regular train. The difference between the two will be explained below via pictures.
Now, to start things with...
The train stations are just absolutely phenomenal. They are the original train stations from the Haussman period (1800s). They have the original glass windows, iron details, and all the cool stuff that I like about older buildings.
This is Gare de Lyon. This is considered the "headquarters" in Paris. It is the largest and the busiest station in the city. All of the trains and metros (subway) ultimately go into this station before going out to other boroughs of the city.
This is Gare de Auschwitz. This is the station in Paris that has trains going out to various towns all over France. This is where we took our TGV to Nice. Its a nice, smaller station compared to Gare de Lyon. We very much appreciated the fact it was less busy and easy for us to settle down in before our long trip to the Mediterranean.
You may think, "Oh, whoope-de-doo, whats so exciting about a bunch of old, musty French train stations?" Well, my absolutely favorite part of these buildings is that once you enter the front doors and walk past the ticket booths/kiosks, you are greeted by a wonderful sight. Unbeknownst to most travelers, inside or behind these old, musty French stations there is a huge 3-4 story glass enclosure that houses the trains. It is truly a sight...
It was so unexpected to have all this light inside such an old building. These "greenhouse-like" enclosures are made out of entirely glass and iron. Truly beautiful.
Towards the back of the building, where the trains enter/exit, it is a solid wall of glass/iron where it looks almost like lace.
Here's a lovely picture of me and Ted inside a train station. Note the unique ceiling. I never got tired of looking up when stepping off a train. The trains beside us are the "regular" trains (my apologies... I cant remember the fancy term for these trains.) They are very long, relatively narrow and... typical looking. Nothing to sneeze at, if you ask me.
Now, now... we're talking. These cool bullet-looking trains are the TGVs. They are the Star Trek version of all trains... they are sleek, FAST, and well... spaceship looking. We rode the TGV between Paris and Nice. It is approximately 580 miles and it only took us 3 hours to get there. The TGV goes up to 200 mph and it was amazing to look out the windows- everything was zipping by and it was difficult to figure out shapes and colors. It was just fun!
It was interesting to see how French train conductors treated us. Once they saw the group of us signing away, they gave us different treatment compared to the regular folk. One thing I really appreciated was that our travel agent purchased all of our train tickets in advance, so I had a nifty plastic binder with all of our individual tickets for each train trip planned. It was pretty bulky to carry, but it proved to be very important especially when dealing with train conductors. They have staff that walk through each car to check and monitor each person and stamp their tickets (and kick off the ones who dont have tickets). Often, when one would pass us by, they would ask me (it was always me... I dont know why) "Votre billet?" which means "your ticket?" I gestured that I was deaf, and they would immediately put their hands up in the air and nod their heads and continue their merry way. They didnt bother to check our tickets or stamp them. Hmm, interesting. This proved to be very convivenent later in Tours when we wanted to go to different towns that were not on our intertiary.It was the guys' idea to "test the system" and see if we could train hop without being caught. We decided to take a short trip down to Blois, which was only a 7 minute train ride from our hotel. No biggie, right? "Nah, dont worry, itll be fine" said the guys. Well, once I saw the uniform at the end of the car heading our way, I started to fidget and told the others that he was coming. We started signing animately to make it obvious that we were deaf. Of course, he asks ME (why me?? geez) "Votre billet?" My response was "huh?" and point to my ears. He then pointed to my ticket package and gestured he wanted to see it. At this point, the guys were frozen and their eyes were big. Busted!!! I had to go into this elaborate story (in my limited french) how we missed our stop and we're trying to loop back to the correct stop and how we are so sorry... we're Americans, ya know? We're idiots... blah blah blah.
Apparently I said or did something right, the conductor just nodded his head off and graciously walked on. As you can imagine, Kathy and I bopped the guys on the backside of their heads and we bought tickets for ourselves for any unplanned trips (the guys didn't, no surprise... and they never got caught. Go figure).
Anyway, by the end of our trip, we were pros at navigating the train system in France.Tonight, Im wishing that I could conveniently hop on a train up North, rather than driving 4 hours in the cold snowy weather. It would be so much easier sitting in a plush, velvet seat with my laptop and a large cup of hot tea.
1 comment:
It is no surprise to me that you loved these buildings. They truly are beautiful in the pictures, I can only imagine how wonderful they were in person. I'm so glad you had this experience and that you're sharing it with all of us.
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