The travel gods took a swipe at us this evening. After an uneventful flight into Paris, and after our bags coming off of the carousel in first position, and after getting on a train into Paris that was an express to the Gare du Nord, which meant that there were only 5 stops until ours at Denfert Rochereau … well, after that, everything went haywire. Our “express” train made an unexpected stop at Aulney-sous-Bois, followed by a very faint, mumbled announcement that neither Suzie and I could understand, but which we eventually figured out (thanks to Suzie’s asking, giving credit where credit is due) meant that we had to leave our train and take a tram line, which seemed to be heading the exact wrong direction, to someplace called Bondy (which neither of us had ever heard of), for a purpose that we didn’t really understand. But, everyone else with suitcases from CDG was getting on the tram, so we did, too.
The tram, it turned out, was excruciatingly slow, as it was running on a rail line on regular streets, and the stops from Aulney-sous-Bois to Bondy seemed endless (looking at the map just now, I count ten). When we arrived at Bondy we figured out that we were to take another RER rail line into another station (Haussman-St. Lazare), so we carried our three heavy bags and our three heavy backpacks down stairs and then up stairs to another platform, where, sure enough, a train arrived to take us into Paris.
Unfortunately, the Metro transfers from St. Lazare to Alesia were horrible, beginning with getting from the RER to the Metro at St. Lazare, which involved not only a good walk, but also a set of stairs (thanks to a broken escalator) that has to be one of the longest climbs in the system, then a long ride on the 13 line, a long correspondence at Montparnasse (more stairs, but not as steep), and of course all of the Metro cars were packed, in part because of the problem with the RER. We were unreasonably happy to see the Alesia Metro station, and the inside of our apartment, after a two-hour haul that should have been about 35 minutes.
But it turns out the problem with the train was a sad one — “un accident grave de voyageur” — which shut down the entire RER B line from Chatelet (one of the main Paris stations) north to CDG airport:
So we should count our blessings, I suppose. We’re now safe and sound in our little apartment, the plane didn’t crash, we’re all fine. And tomorrow is election day in the USA, perhaps the start of something new. With that, I’m going to bed.
Categories: Travel -- France