Toulon - Paris

Getting from Toulon to Lyon was harder than expected, all because of the stupid 4 day weekend the Frenchies had! Argh, the trains were ridiculously expensive and freaking sold out!!!! At the hotel checked that our train would go at 12 and get to Lyon by 3, perfect, got the whole day to spend in Lyon yet... Got to the train station and what do you know, all the tickets (except 1st class - 200 euros) were sold out!!!!! After a think, some frustration we decided to take the 2 o'clock train, that still had some seats in 2nd class. Nice train though. Now the next big issue was get all our heavy bags on the train in a short period of time. Luckily there are signs that say where on the platform you have to stand for your carriage (assigned seats) and we were one of the firsts to get on... A guy kindly helped to put our luggage in the rack (which was a lot bigger than I'd expected to be honest) while other people behind us frantically tried to get on board - I just rudely stood in their way :D Hey me first :D Then we realised our seats were at the very end of the carriage -.- Mid-way Mr. Special hauled all our luggage to the racks closer to us. Everyone was giving him a sympathetic look :D

We got to Lyon about 5 and first went to the hire car desks. One lady gave us hope - there might be something available but the system has crashed so come back first thing tomorrow morning! (Hope!!!! mind you at this point the train and car would've been roughly the same price). There were a couple of smart cars left but no use to us :( So Mr. Special went the next morning only to come back empty handed again and a frantic search for train tickets began - ones for the 2,5h TGV went straight under our noses! Dangit. We were forced to take the 5 hour regional train -.- 5 hours instead of 2,5!!!!! Torture! And it was a 7AM train... this time we were the first stop so had plenty of time to sort out our luggage and much to my surprise it was a really nice train, I'd been expecting an old train with no room to move at all (kind of like Arriva in Wales) but it was really nice and the time flew by - I slept through half of the journey.

12.22 at Paris Bercy. Goal is to find the metro station and our way to or flat. The metro is about a hundred meters from the train station so nothing impossible :) Bought our tickets - 10 in one go - works out cheaper like that :) Now how are we going to get through the gates with our luggage - there was no gate for wheelchair users etc. So after a little freak out we made it, big suitcase in front of us ran through the gate pulling the little suitcase behind me as quickly as possible :D Now the next mission: stairs -.- why no escalators???? The metro wasn't too busy luckily so getting on and off the trains wasn't too bad - had to change once.

Now a 13-minute (according to google maps) awaited us... In other words death because it was uphill!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It took us about 40 minutes I think or a bit longer. Never again! :D But the flat is soooo worth it!!! It's even nicer in real life than it was on the photos. I'm lovin´ it :) Got my stuff packed and excited to go to work tomorrow - decided I'll take the metro and the tram because that should be a 40-minute journey as opposed to the 1 hour walk. Maybe walk back :)

Ps! The landlady was so nice that she had bought us pasta, eggs, croissants, a baguette and juice since the supermarket closed at 12.30 already :) I was a bit worried to be honest because they'd had a bad experience before - don't know the details - but someone had sent them a false passport and she was asking so many questions on why we want to come here (didn't really answer them :D) and asked to contact the uni to make sure I am a legit student. Luckily for me I am :D and no problems, I will stay here as long as promised, pay my rent and not break anything - PS! this is a completely new and fancy flat with some computerized heating system and god knows what else - I have a huge touchscreen on my wall :S I'd rather not touch it - then I won't make a mess of anything ;)

I'll write about Lyon soon :) 

Ttyl ;)

Jazzz...