Paris, France, Days one and two
We were faced with a long train ride today, first from Berlin to Cologne (Köln) and then swapping trains and continuing on to Paris. The leg to Cologne was fine, and we quite enjoyed riding the Italian and German trains, not least because we were able to travel in first class. The Paris leg wasn’t quite as smooth though. Firstly, we were back in the packed cattle class and secondly because the train seemed to be heading through Belgium on its way to Paris, and our ticket was only valid for travel in Italy, Germany and France - an expensive oversight for us on behalf of our booking agency.
Still, after eight hours on trains, we arrived at Gare du Nord in Paris and set about finding the apartment we had booked for the week. This wasn’t too difficult, but the apartment itself wasn’t exactly what we were expecting and turned out to be pretty ordinary, really. Still, the location was good, so we decided not to dwell on what kind of hotel we could have got for the same price. We ended up finding a supermarket and, after bread, cheese, ham and wine (our new staples) for dinner, we headed to bed.
The forecast for the week looked a bit cool, so Katie thought this would be the best time to start shopping and the next day we headed to Printemps, a huge department store. Katie found a couple of jackets to buy and we went up to have lunch on the ninth floor of the store, with a great view of the city. After this, we just explored a bit more of our neighbourhood and finished up another quiet day.
