Sans domicile fixe/Homeless in Paris

This is such a long story. First of all - why were we back in Paris - a city we had tried to leave for so long the week before, but kept on having challenges getting train tickets? Second, now that we were back in Paris - how did we end up homeless? First things first - why were we back in Paris. Well to get from Barcelona to our next stop, Rome, we had to travel through Paris. Unfortunately the connection was  not great. As such we would get into Paris at 5pm but our next train to Rome would leave at 7am. I decided that booking a hostel would not make any sense. Paris is expensive - we would pay loads to stay in the city. Our next option would be Chelles - the far off godforsaken town we stayed in last time. The same town that had no taxis and required a half hour walk with our backpacks to get to the apartment.....It was a no-brainer - too much effort for just one night of sleep. I decided we would sleep at the train station - on our backpacks.....It seemed like a grand plan, until.......

So we got to Paris at 5pm, managed to book all our remaining tickets - Rome, Geneva, Amsterdam. We were happy - this time Paris was going to be a breeze. We had our tickets out of the city - what's the worst thing that could happen. We went to the Eiffel tower, took pictures with giant teddy bears close to the tower and finally headed back to the train station around 9/10pm to sleep....Or so we thought.

Total balaa! The first signs of problems was the closed toilets. Where did they expect us to go pee in the middle of the night? Ah well, we will survive. We set our bags down - everyone picking a nice wall to sleep against. Then we saw an official looking person say something to other tourists who seemed to have the same plan as us. They stood up and carried their bags. Uh oh! They got to us and the message was loud and clear. "You need to leave the train station. We are closing for the night." Excuse me? What the hell type of regional train station closes for the night? Till today I think this is intentionally done to prevent people from sleeping at the train station. 

What to do.....We are homeless and sleepy. You do recall the activities of our previous night in Barcelona. The BARacuda and I partied till morning then caught the train to Paris. We needed sleep. We went to a part of town that had a bar that promised to stay open till 5am.....Good, then we would only have 2 hours to kill before our next train. We got into the bar. We were a sight. We were falling asleep on the table. "Wake up! They will kick us out thinking we're drunk." "Ok, what do we do to stay awake?" "Let's play cards." That was the sorriest game of cards ever played. "Oh, that's a 5 of spades? I thought it was a Queen of hearts." People were struggling. 

Finally the light at the end of the tunnel came in the form of a little Nepali bartender who liked The Reluctant. He started getting us all shots on the house - now that kept us up:-) Finally at 5am, we dragged our exhausted feet out of the bar and into the train station. 

Goodbye Paris!

The official Paris tour

Today we finally managed to go for the official free Paris tour. The tour guide was a Dutch guy who seemed really high. We learnt quite a few interesting things - who knew Napoleon was Italian?  Napoleon was born on Corsica on August 15, 1769, just 15 months after France had purchased the island from the Italian city-state of Genoa. Next we spent quite a bit of time learning about the French revolution - whose most bloody memory is the death of Marie Antoinette and 4000 other royals. The French Revolution overthrew the monarchy, established a republic, experienced violent periods of political turmoil, and finally resulted in a dictatorship under Napoleon that rapidly brought many of its principles to Western Europe and beyond. Some of these repercussions included the end of slavery in French colonies.  

 The safety cord was unfortunately able to join as her leg got injured in the previous day's long walking adventures. After the tour, we went to the train station to try and buy tickets to leave Paris for Barcelona the next day. Yet again, we were not able to book any tickets. It was beginning to get very annoying. By this time, most of us were tired of Paris and its unfriendliness. We were ready to leave.  In the evening, we went to a quartier of Paris called Montmarte for dinner. 

I started having a killer toothache - that could only mean one thing. A cavity in need of a root canal. I am an expert at teeth issues. This had to the the worst timing for a tooth to do this to me. On the following day, I was bedridden. Toothache was killing me. I had bought a little anesthetic and was self-medicating. I sent The Little Toe and the Reluctant  to buy train tickets - yet again they were all sold out. Paris was trying to hold us captive. We decided we would have to go to the train station the next morning and find train tickets out of town, however we could. I tried to sleep early, but pain kept me up till 5am. By 7am, we were up and on our way to the train station with all our bags.......and no tickets..

Heading to Paris

We got to the train station quite early for our train ride to Paris, but the journey was delayed as a result of someone jumping on the train-tracks. We left for Paris at 2:30pm on the TGV – one of the fastest trains in the world. The journey was good with a proper lunch being served on the train – there are some perks to traveling with the faster, more-expensive option. I had booked an apartment for us in a place called Chelles. This was the first place I was to find with reasonable prices when I was looking for Paris accommodation. I would later realize that this price meant we stayed quite a fair distance away from the city and the inconvenience of a very long walk to the apartment. From the central Paris station, our stop was around 20 minutes away. This was not that terrible, but once we got off the train – with our heavy backpacks, we realized there were absolutely no taxis in this part of Paris. We asked around at a bar and a restaurant near the train station and we were told that the only option would be to call a taxi from Central paris (which would automatically charge us $40) to get to us. Thus with our backpacks, we began the 30 minute walk to our apartment. This became our daily routine while in Paris (obviously without the backpacks.) A 20 minute train ride followed by a half hour walk to our apartment or vice-versa depending on whether we were heading out or coming back home. On the plus side our apartment was lovely – and affordable. We got there around 10pm and immediately passed out after our long journey.

The following morning we went to town to catch the free city tour, but didn’t get there in time. We instead walked around by ourselves – we went to the fountain at St. Michael the archangel – the most flamboyant statue I have ever seen. After that we went to the world famous museum that houses the Mona Lisa – the Louvre. We then went to Champs Elysees - the beautiful 2km long boulevard which runs between Place de la Concorde and Place Charles de Gaulle and is where the famous  Arc de Triomphe is located. We also passed by the  royal gardens etc. Paris is extremely beautiful. 

After what must have been a 20km walk, we went for dinner at a lovely Greek restaurant – washed down our dinner with delicious Kir cocktails (champagne and crème de cassis.) I begged the team to pass by a French lounge that I had fallen in love with a few years back (Les Soffleurs/the glassblowers.) I had wonderful memories of being directed to this place a few years back when I was working for the German Rail Company (Deutsche Bahn) in Saarbrucken, Germany and was in town for a meeting with the French rail company officials (SNCF). My first night there had been magical – I had spent it drinking lots of champagne with Chantal – the 65 year old Martinique owner, a few musicians from St. Martinique, some French actors etc. The vibe was great. I remember at 5am, Chantal completely refusing to accept payment for my drinks (because she said I was great fun and I was the first Kenyan she had met in Paris) and even getting me a free ride back to my hotel. After that trip, I had gone back to Paris that summer once or twice more to party at Les Soffleurs. One day I will tell you my Les Soffleurs stories. We walked all the way there and were sad to find out that it had closed up. I had been dying to see Chantal again and listen to her funny stories. I realized I didn’t even have her contact details anymore and silently wished that the universe would bring us back together.