Sunday 10 October 2010
Arrival
What a luck, none of my several logistic worries turned into reality.
To start with, the trains. Arriving with the TGV bullet trains, rushing through a thousand kilometres in five hours (plus 57 minutes in between the trains, of which in a moment) meant that I had to get the ticket printouts, for which there is a tickets printout machine at the station. Insert your credit card with which you paid, key in the PIN and there you are! But what if it has run out of paper? It was late in the afternoon. A silly thought, anyway. This was the first and perhaps the smallest of worries.
The second one was, of course, that as the first train leaves at the time when—on Sunday morning—I am mostly sound asleep, there is a chance of oversleeping. No worries, woke up at 5 a.m. and the battery of differently timed alarms in various mobile and landline phones kept suprising me for quite some time.
The third one was the way to the station. As the station is so close, I am pretty much accustomed to that I walk there, if the need be. Didn't even think of calling a taxi, since I vividly remember when my brother visited and I had to relay the argument between him and the taxi driver who was waiting in front of the right house, but in a wrong town, at 5 a.m. in the morning of the national holiday.
So I walked, and as the suitcase has got rather battered over time, the third worry was whether its wheels survive the walk. They did.
The fourth one, or the first major one, was the fact that I had a mere 57 minutes to change stations. I understand the Parisian attitude that, of course, anyone arrives to their city to stay, and no one just passes through. There is no such thing like a central station in Paris where all railway lines could meet.
I knew I had just 57 minutes, and prepared a mental schedule. Arrive at 10:19, by 10:25 I arrive the station's metro station, have to wait for the train at the most for 5 minutes (looked the frequency up beforehand), so 10:30 is the latest I can get to the train. Then 8 minutes to Bastille, then perhaps 2 minutes to change the line, then up to 5 minutes next waiting, then 2 minutes more and I should be at Gare de Lyon at 10:47 at the latest, plus 5 minutes of navigating in the station would bring me to the next train well before 11:00 with 16 minutes to spare.
Some tourism website recommended the bus as the fastest means of changing the stations, but what it it was caught in traffic? Same for a taxi. (Remember Mr. Bean going on holidays?) Then the distance is just about 4 km, so, as a last resort, I could walk.
But everything went swimmingly, it took just 25 minutes to walk off the train, through the station to the metro station, get the ticket (lines everywhere, some booths closed, all vending machines inhabited by very slow people, but luckily one of them had got a wrong ticket and offered me his; it suited me well), enter the metro (with some acrobatics of holding my suitcase on my shoulder—it weighed about 18 kg), walk to the correct platform, wait 1 minute for the train, take it to Bastille, walk to its next platform, wait for the train less than a minute, take a short ride to the next station, and walk through the large Gare de Lyon to the TGV trains. Finally, I had even to wait for 10 minutes before the platform was announced!
The second train trip was a little over three hours and since I could not get a GPS fix, I had basically no idea where we were, until shortly before arriving to Avignon we reached a map I had, so that I could keep the camera ready:
Then, when reaching the TGV Aix-en-Provence station, I had 21 minutes until the shuttle bus, if the train was on schedule. It was a few minutes late, so knowing that the bus station is somewhere downstairs, I first rushed at the wrong direction (towards the airport). Then back and to the right place. The bus was a few minutes late and the platform was basically in a wind tunnel.
First sights of the countryside could be taken already from the train.
From the bus station to the hotel there was a ten-minute walk. At the hotel there were some more worries to worry.
First (or, if counting from the top of this story, the fifth) was if my reservation was alright. It was (to my little surprise).
Second (or the sixth) was if my other credit card functioned. The bank is having just today some scheduled maintenance. It functioned.
Third (or the seventh) was if there was internet connection at the hotel. I was mentally prepared that it was otherwise, and the last time I was so long without internet connection was in 1996.
The room is nice and functional, and the view is like this:
To start with, the trains. Arriving with the TGV bullet trains, rushing through a thousand kilometres in five hours (plus 57 minutes in between the trains, of which in a moment) meant that I had to get the ticket printouts, for which there is a tickets printout machine at the station. Insert your credit card with which you paid, key in the PIN and there you are! But what if it has run out of paper? It was late in the afternoon. A silly thought, anyway. This was the first and perhaps the smallest of worries.
The second one was, of course, that as the first train leaves at the time when—on Sunday morning—I am mostly sound asleep, there is a chance of oversleeping. No worries, woke up at 5 a.m. and the battery of differently timed alarms in various mobile and landline phones kept suprising me for quite some time.
The third one was the way to the station. As the station is so close, I am pretty much accustomed to that I walk there, if the need be. Didn't even think of calling a taxi, since I vividly remember when my brother visited and I had to relay the argument between him and the taxi driver who was waiting in front of the right house, but in a wrong town, at 5 a.m. in the morning of the national holiday.
So I walked, and as the suitcase has got rather battered over time, the third worry was whether its wheels survive the walk. They did.
The fourth one, or the first major one, was the fact that I had a mere 57 minutes to change stations. I understand the Parisian attitude that, of course, anyone arrives to their city to stay, and no one just passes through. There is no such thing like a central station in Paris where all railway lines could meet.
I knew I had just 57 minutes, and prepared a mental schedule. Arrive at 10:19, by 10:25 I arrive the station's metro station, have to wait for the train at the most for 5 minutes (looked the frequency up beforehand), so 10:30 is the latest I can get to the train. Then 8 minutes to Bastille, then perhaps 2 minutes to change the line, then up to 5 minutes next waiting, then 2 minutes more and I should be at Gare de Lyon at 10:47 at the latest, plus 5 minutes of navigating in the station would bring me to the next train well before 11:00 with 16 minutes to spare.
Some tourism website recommended the bus as the fastest means of changing the stations, but what it it was caught in traffic? Same for a taxi. (Remember Mr. Bean going on holidays?) Then the distance is just about 4 km, so, as a last resort, I could walk.
But everything went swimmingly, it took just 25 minutes to walk off the train, through the station to the metro station, get the ticket (lines everywhere, some booths closed, all vending machines inhabited by very slow people, but luckily one of them had got a wrong ticket and offered me his; it suited me well), enter the metro (with some acrobatics of holding my suitcase on my shoulder—it weighed about 18 kg), walk to the correct platform, wait 1 minute for the train, take it to Bastille, walk to its next platform, wait for the train less than a minute, take a short ride to the next station, and walk through the large Gare de Lyon to the TGV trains. Finally, I had even to wait for 10 minutes before the platform was announced!
The second train trip was a little over three hours and since I could not get a GPS fix, I had basically no idea where we were, until shortly before arriving to Avignon we reached a map I had, so that I could keep the camera ready:
 |
| Avignon |
First sights of the countryside could be taken already from the train.
From the bus station to the hotel there was a ten-minute walk. At the hotel there were some more worries to worry.
First (or, if counting from the top of this story, the fifth) was if my reservation was alright. It was (to my little surprise).
Second (or the sixth) was if my other credit card functioned. The bank is having just today some scheduled maintenance. It functioned.
Third (or the seventh) was if there was internet connection at the hotel. I was mentally prepared that it was otherwise, and the last time I was so long without internet connection was in 1996.
The room is nice and functional, and the view is like this:
 |
| View from the room |
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