July 18th
Today was no fun at all …I write about it because not everything about travelling is going to be wonderful and fun but I am going to share it all with you anyway! And I want people to know and see how to avoid the sucky stuff we had to deal with
First up we tried to get our train from Paris to Lyon – got to the train station an hour early to activate our eurail passes and then go… My advice: If you haven’t activated your passes, or even if you have, get there realllllyyy early!
Paris Gare Lyon train station was like a labrynth. We got lost and when we finally found where we needed to go there was a sign saying “All Eurail pass holders, for better service go upstairs to booth one” pff better service … yeah sure! My advice: Don’t go anywhere else just line up at the SNCF booths where they sell tickets, they can activate your passes.
When we got upstairs to the booths there there was no one manning it. There were huge lines for another one so we asked someone for advice. We were told we didn’t have enough time to get our tickets or to activate our passes and to just try get on the train.
When we got to the train, by now I was pretty stressed and probably speaking way too fast! we spoke to the conductor he said he would charge us 80 euro each to get on and he was mean to me because I didn’t speak French, so we decided to try get the next one. We went grabbed a bite to eat … I tried not to lose it, and we then lined up for over an hour to find out if we could get our passes activated and get on the next one. My advice: Try to speak slowly and clearly or people dont understand you and can be really rude… also try not to lose your shit and kill people, that usually doesn’t go down well either! haha
It took so long we missed the second train and we were charged again for our next ticket. They said if we got the one after we wouldn’t have had to pay again… but the lines were so big we would have missed it anyway. They also charged us standard ticket rate … so far my Eurail pass has been useless! Urghhh, we watched many people who missed their trains because of the lack of organisation!
When we finally got onto a train it took us to the wrong stop but we didn’t care, we were in Lyon! We caught a cab to our hotel and when we got there and there was no reception because it was a Sunday … instead we spoke to a guy through a telecom that told us a secret code for our safe that would hold our key for our room … I felt like I was in a spy movie!
We got our key card and tried to get in the room, The key was faulty … of course it was! There was no reception, the phones in the hall were switched off and it seemed no one was actually in this hotel, including guests to ask for advice! HAHAHA insane!! Rhys heard shuffling down the hall so we walked around, found a cleaner who gave us her master keycard… Freaking awesome! So we now have the power to go into any room we like! But after our day, we dont have the will! hahaha
We have a kitchen in our room though which is freaking awesome! (Added pic of us actually moving on the train woo!)
We walked around for over an hour and could not find one super marche … only creepy corner stores with smelly produce and strange shop keepers who didnt speak french or english or anything we understood in the slightest. We went to 5 of these strange shops before we found one that seemed sanitary enough to buy from haha I got some fresh veg and ingredients to make a yummy tomato, champinion sauce with spinach and ricotta tortellini, dont worry I checked use-by dates haha
While cooking Rhys tried to open the can of champinions for me and he cut his finger on the can, he thought it was a little nick, but it looked bad! I though we should go to a doctor but you know boys they gotta be tough about it, so he said no… I cleaned it up for him put some betadine onto it and strapped it tightly to put pressure on it to stop the bleeding so we could at least look at it properly in an hour or so. Urghh this day keeps getting worse!
After a yummy dinner, Rhys was happy with his “home cooked” meal, I looked at his finger and its good news people, its not bad at all! Just need to keep it clean and it will heal in no time 🙂 Phhewwww! hahaha So for Steve and Carol, your boy is all good! thankfully! and now he has an excuse to never help me in the kitchen ever again, maybe this was his plan? haha
After dinner we watched Bridesmaids on my laptop, a nice end to a crappy day! Tomorrow will be better … It has to be! haha
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