Page 8 of 9
Paris, France
If she is electric, can I be electric too?
This trip was all about overnight trains. They’re convenient, I can usually sleep pretty well on them (apparently I can sleep pretty well just about anywhere) and they save a lot of money since instead of paying for a train and hotel, I’m just paying for a train. But the real reason to take them is that they just save a lot of otherwise wasted travel time, really maximizing your time on the ground when you can. Of the seven (yes, seven) overnight train trips I planned this time, I only have two more left, and one of them leaves tonight from Gare du Nord, giving me just about a full day to do whatever I want to in Paris.
I have been planning this trip as I go, but looked at my day in Paris as more of a bonus day. After arriving at Gare de l’Est, I walked over to Gare du Nord to check my bag, then hopped on a 4 Metro train to the stop past Cite. From there, I headed to Sainte-Chapelle (always worth a second visit) and then worked my way back to here, the Musee d’Orsay. I had been here on my last trip just two years earlier, but felt that I rushed the experience on that last kind of crazy blitz tour. The Orsay remains a great museum in great building, and any excuse to return is probably worth it in the end.
Another blurry picture, this is the amazing cutway model of Charles Garnier’s Opera House, also at the Orsay. They have a whole area with a glass floor and a spectacular site model of Paris underneath, but those pictures were somehow even blurrier than this one.
The classic view from atop the Arc de Triomphe, which remains as spectacular as I remembered.
There is nothing better than the walk from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe. and if I’m in Paris you know sooner or later that’s where you’re going to find me. And if you walked all the way there, why not climb the stairs up to the top, just to look back again at the Champs Elysee and the traffic circle in all its beautiful and chaotic glory.
From Paris my overnight train took me somewhere else (more about that on the next page) and then another train took me here to my last big stop on this crazy long Eurail pass trip. Beautiful yet kind of gamey near and just east of the Centraal Rail Station, Amsterdam remains everything it's supposed to be.
I stayed in an actual hotel, although instead of staying in Amsterdam, I stayed twenty minutes away (by train) in Haarlem, a pleasant enough place, kind of like a small Amsterdam without all those damn canals and tourists in the way.
