Okay. Another charming picture from Paris. The only thing wrong with the image is that it includes lots of clear blue sky. Our experience suggests that Paris is, in fact, extremely overcast with frequent rain and thunderstorms. Sometimes clears for short periods, and often in the evening, which is good for walking to dinner. Otherwise, grey and wet.
But that's not where we left our heroes. The had, in fact, just successfully run the gauntlet of french customs and immigration and were about to embark (there was lots of embarking on this trip) on their Parisian adventure, starting with calling the shuttle company to say they'd arrived and confirm they wanted to be picked up. A simple step - the instructions even referred to the service desk with a freephone to make the call...
You may recall, however, that the facilities of Terminal 3 were, shall we say, lacklustre. This included a lack of lustre on the Parishuttle desk-with-freephone. Primarily due to the fact there wasn't one. Nor a table, or wall phone. At least, not of the Parishuttle variety. We searched high, and low, and back and forth. No desk. Not even in the train station. So we examined our voucher (so many things worked on vouchers) for a hint as to where we had gone wrong. They had a magic number that you could ring if you needed assistance. We felt that not being able to find our shuttle desk counted, so rang it. Presented with the option of either travelling in the next 48 hours, or not travelling in the next 48 hours, after some consideration, we picked option 1. Got put through to an operator that was as useful as the Parishuttle desk at terminal three was visible. Not the most compelling of starts for the French Experience. We spoke very little French, the trip organisers (well, their helpdesk) had nothing useful to offer, the arrivals building provided no joy, the train station provided no joy, the help/information desk at the terminal waved us towards the doors in answer to our questions about the shuttle (though for all we know that's what she thought we were after). We'd been in the terminal nearly 2 hours at this stage (including queue waiting) it was getting dark, and we were getting hungry.
We hated Paris.
We examined the voucher one last time. Maybe the answer was simply hidden in an anagram of the first letter of each word? Or... perhaps the Parishuttle company could help. Their number was on the voucher, and with the joys of GSM roaming our cell phones worked... At the absolute worst they should be able to tell us where the desk was.
Now, at this point, the alert reader will have noticed that what the instructions actually wanted was for the clients-to-be-shuttled to call the Parishuttle company to confirm their arrival. The magic desk (or Holy Grail, as it might as well have been) was, ultimately, simply a place that provided a phone. Possibly without the user needing to dial anything, but a phone nonetheless.
As absolute travel novices (these vouchers were very foreign to us, much like the French) this completely escaped us. Fortunately, however, the Parishuttle people have been doing this for sometime, so when I rang, explained we had a transfer arranged with Parishuttle to our hotel, and paused for breath, the nice french man on the other end of the phone (who switched to English immediately) simply asked for my name. And found our booking on his computer. And said "Certainly, which terminal are you at?". And checked again, when I told him it was Terminal 3, "You're at Terminal 3?" (I fondly imagine his query was one of disbelief, as he knew there was no desk at Terminal 3 as no one ever arrived there, except, perhaps, whiney brits who feel they deserve superior treatment). We were pleased. Very pleased. So pleased, in fact, that all our clues ran away and hid so it didn't occur to me to ask how long/far away our minibus would be. So when we were still standing outside the entrance 45 minutes later we had no idea whether this was normal, or we'd incorrectly conveyed our location.
You may imagine our relief when a minibus turned up with Parishuttle emblazoned on the front. Swiftly followed by amusement as it turned out that the couple next to us were also expecting a Parishuttle, and that the driver had not been expecting either of us. This was clearly destined to be our chariot, however, as it had exactly 4 seats free. Luggage thrown in the back we set off with a bunch of complete strangers to what we hoped would be our hotel.
Which it was. A while later, after steeling ourselves to the insanity of Parisian driving, we pulled up outside the "Best Western Opera Saint Lazare; 9, rue de Constantinople, Paris 75008, France". Seemed nice enough, very similar forms to those at the Hilton, Singapore, though no one insisting on taking our luggage away. Having dutifully filled out our forms we headed on up to our room, 115. It was hot. The room was a little stuffy. Partly because it was hot. Partly because you couldn't really swing a suitcase all the way around, nevermind a cat (which I always presume you hold by the tail, when swinging for size comparisons). Open windows solved the hot and stuffy issues, and there were actually two places to put suitcases - handy since we had two suitcases. Other than being dimly lit at night, it was a clean, functional room. Not the Hilton (nor at the Hilton price) but it had a TV, shower, toilet (sperate from the shower), phone and a small piece of plastic claiming the entire hotel was alive with WiFi, thanks to SFR.
Even better than that, it turns out it was cheaper than the Hilton and seemingly just as reliable and speedy. The laptop crashed all over the place, but I'm currently blaming that on the Nokia software - I've never managed to successfully use any Nokia software on this laptop. Works fine everywhere else (other laptops, desktops) but not the Acer C100.
Anyway. We were wired (wirelessly) to the internet, we had a servicable room, a comfy bed and a continued dislike of Paris. Braving the Parisian winter, we headed out to find some dinner. Sorry, I mean, Braving the Parisian summer, we headed out to find some dinner. Which we did, at a local place. The first local place that had a menu in the window in english. If their menu was englishable we felt there was a good chance someone in the place spoke enough english to recognise what was on their menu. We were right. In fact, she had a perfectly good grasp of English, and one that put our grasp of French to shame. So we ate. And it was good. And we ate dessert, and it too was good. And we had coffee, this too was good. The the lil dog appeared, and added to the general goodness of the place. We paid, we left, we slept, hoping that tomorrow would be less of a disaster than the previous day. Which, all told, wasn't actually that much of a disaster.
Later, if you're good, I'll tell you the story about our second day in paris...
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