From: Rainer
Subject: Rainer's Europe Trip 1998 -- part 31
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 02:15:09 EST

Saturday, 10/24 -- part 31

The hotel is chilly -- especially in the dining room where breakfast is
served.  The boiled eggs and the coffee are ice cold.  Packing is pretty
easy.  We've practiced this a few times by now.  The walk to the train
station is just a few minutes.  I assume the normal train station guard
post over our luggage while Vera and Monika ask for money and tour the
place.  There's not much touristy in the train station so the only thing
they return with is a magazine titled "Vera."

The train arrives on time, they post the departure platform and we head
off.  Being experts on Italian trains by now, the ticket validation
happens almost without thinking about it.  Our car is the furthest from
the end, of course, but we have ample time.   We're the only ones on
this first class car and have the compartment all to ourselves.  The
restaurant car appears closed.  After a juice-only breakfast coffee
would be really nice.  It's 4 hours to Lyon.

The train rolls out on time.  There's nothing to be seen of the scenery
except shadows of things in the heavy smog/haze.  The further we get
from Torino, the clearer it becomes.  Soon we're in the Alps and the
scenery is great.  Unfortunately, train travel in the Alps has the nice
views interrupted very frequently with long tunnels.

A vendor pushes a little cart into our car.  He has no coffee.  We get
some instant cappucino as a last resort.  It's at least warmish.  We use
up the last of our Lire in doing so.  About an hour away form Lyon, lots
of people board the train from one of the stops.  A French woman joins
us in our compartment.  I've been reading from my journal to Vera and
Monika -- something that usually happens at night in the hotel but which
has been curtailed recently because there's always too much to do and
the reading part happens too late.  I finish the section I'm on and put
the laptop away.

We arrive in Lyon on time at 1224.  The TVG (high speed train) to Paris
what we have tickets for doesn't leave until 1500.  The Lyon train
station is very crowded.  I assume the baggage guard duty position again
while Vera and Monika find a bathroom and a place to eat.  We settle on
the O'Gorman's Irish Pub very close to the baggage guard post.  The have
Guinness on tap!  What a find.  The food is good.  The waiter is very
friendly.  He offers to take our picture for us as we take turns with
the cameras.  We hang out in the Pub until it's time to go to the
platform.  TVG is also very crowded -- you have to have reservations to
board it.

Our seats are on the upper level of one of the first class cars.  The
environment is like business class on a plane.  Very nice.  The train
really moves, too.  Monika and I wish that the flight home could be on a
TVG car.  The distance from Torino to Lyon is shorter than from Lyon to
Paris.  But the TVG takes only 2 hours compared to the 4 hours from this
morning.  There are no stops.  It's great.

The closer we get to Paris, the greyer the skies become.  It starts to
rain.  In Paris we find a huge line of people waiting for taxis.  There
are lots of taxis, so the wait isn't too long.  We get ours -- it's a
bit tight since the driver's got the shotgun seat filled with her stuff
and we all have to pile in the back seat.  She drives us through the
rain to the Holiday Inn Garden Court in Montmartre.

We get to our room and find it very small, but livable.  All the
features we need are here.  We do the normal get acquainted with the
hotel room stuff -- check the bath room, open the drapes and windows,
examine the contents of the minibar, figure out if the phone will
support email, etc.  The first thing we find is that the card key to the
door is very unpredictable.  In the two days here we never did get a
consistent function of the door.  The sink doesn't drain, the toilet
flush mechanism is even more unpredictable than the card key.  But, he
have a window that opens and an air conditioner.  There are more than 1
or 2 beers in the fridge.  All of the items are the same price making
tallying easier.  To our surprise, there's no restaurant to the hotel.
Didn't expect that after Holiday Inns elsewhere

The Rue de Damremont doesn't have a lot of restaurants either.  We stop
in one brasserie and sit down, but they tell us that they're not serving
food today.  We walk a bit further -- it's raining pretty hard -- and
find another Italian restaurant.  Not exactly what we were up for.  The
meal is spendy and not in the books to be remembered for anything.

Back in the room, Vera crashes and Monika and I bang out stuff on the
laptop.  I'm trying to catch up on the journal.  I finish two more
before I go to bed at 1:30.