July 11, 2015 - Renfe From Barcelona to Paris

We were up and out of the apartment by 7:30 this morning.  Luckily as Elaine walked out to the street a taxi drove up.  We were sitting in the Renfe first class lounge by 8:00.

 Would you like anything to drink, water, soda, juice or beer?

 There was also coffee, tea, hot chocolate and some snacks.

 Ok, I know this is a weird picture, but I have never seen a square toilet before.

We headed to platform 6 a little before 9.  The security check went very quickly.  We just threw our bags on the scanner, grabbed them and went on.  There was a pretty good line to check your ticket before heading down to the platform but luckily they opened up another line with us so we sped right through.  There was no one to direct us on the train as to where to go and where to put our luggage.  We were on the top deck of the train and so had to carry our luggage up the little steps to the top deck with us.  Again I am glad we packed lighter.  Someone came around giving us a train satisfaction survey to fill out and for the first time Roger had to write down that he was 50....as you can see that made him a little sad.

I booked the first class seats for this part of our trip because we were on the train for 6 1/2 hours.  FYI they do not give you any food or drinks while on the train in first class.

 We traveled along the southern coast of France for a little while.

At least when we started traveling in France the scenery changed.  We did not see another olive tree.

 We saw some cute villages.

 We also saw some sheep.  It was kind of hard to take pictures of anything while going 293 KM/H.

 We pulled into the Gare Lyon train station in Paris right on time.  Then it was time to find the metro, get tickets and struggle through the turnstiles & up and down stairs with our luggage.

The nice thing was that we knew right were the apartment was and that it was just a block and a half from the metro stop.  Diana was there to meet us at the apartment but there was a little problem with the kitchen plumbing and she was waiting for the plumber to get there.  We dropped off our suitcases and while the plumber was fixing the sink we headed to find something to eat and by the time we came back they were all gone.  As we headed for bed thinking we were going to bed early since it was still light outside it was already after 9:30.  Thank goodness there are shutters on the bedroom windows so that it is dark.