La vie parisienne d'Alana

Le mercredi 13 juin Our train to Nice left around 7h00 from Gare de Lyon. We dropped off our Airbnb keys and caught an Uber to the station, my cheeks turning red as the driver graciously hoisted my heavy luggage out of the trunk of the car.  We rolled our luggage into the large and crowded train station, squinting to find our train on le tableau des départs .  I had never been in a train station this large or crowded before, except for maybe South Station in Boston.  This gare reminded me of Grand Central Station in New York in its hey day.  I was grateful to have experience with train travel via Amtrak, because now I had to navigate our next moves, but in French.  This would be my first time taking le TGV and it required some research on my part through the SNCF (Société nationale des chemins de fer) website. TGV stands for train à grande vitesse and it can be a very convenient way to get through France and connect to other parts of Europe. I have done ...

Le mardi 12 juin Today we rose bright and early for our tour.  We would be visiting two castles in the Loire Valley - one that inspired the castle from La belle et la bête ( Beauty and the Beast ), and one that inspired countless other contes de fées (fairy tales).  We boarded the bus outside of the Denfert-Rochereau metro station.  Claire and I had grabbed two pains au chocolat at our boulangerie-patisserie across the street from our apartment and ate those on the tour bus as we waited for departure. Quite tired from the night before, having only four or so hours of sleep after the cabaret, we leaned back and unintentionally dozed off to the drone of our tour guides’ voices. We had booked our tour through TripAdvisor, just as I had done with the Claude Monet house and gardens tour. For the TripAdvisor tours, the guide will give an intro to the history of the destination you are going to visit and then will generally allow you to tour the monument on your own....