OOH LA LA

OH MY! Quelle difference! Now this hotel is nice! Spacious, stylish, and set in lovely Strasbourg. Of course getting here was "interesting." As usual.

Knowing we were clueless regarding procedures at the train station, we decided to leave our hotel two hours before our train was to leave Paris for Strasbourg. Good thing.

The drive took us through beautiful streets and the train station was a nice surprise: cute shops, good food, book store. But, of course signs could have been a bit more helpful:( I had made reservations online and the instructions said something like "just go to the self serve kiosk" to print your ticket. Right. I expected to see the sort one finds in an airport. Not. There were lots of little yellow things that said they were to exchange tickets. ??????

Usually I can watch others and figure things out (metro excluded), but, sadly, not today. There was a sign to an office that seemed like it might be the place to go, but I have to tell you the arrows pointed in weird directions. We'd follow them and get to more shops - not offices. So the office was hiding in plain sight and was the right place to go. Our ticket man didn't speak English, but, happily, I could tell him what we needed. Whew!

Signs for the trains were way better, and Papa figured out how to find ours. Good boy.

We ate delicious hot panini fromager. "Chaud!!!!!" the man warned as he handed over our sandwiches and beer. Not the beer - it was nice and cold.

We figured out how to stamp our tickets but had to ask how to find our train car. They were certainly not marked in a way we could figure out. Nothing new, huh?
Once on board we enjoyed wonderful seats and a smooth beautiful ride through the French countryside.

Hint: When at the train station in Strasbourg, don't accidentally enter a toilette as another customer is coming out. Wait. Let the door close. Drop 35€ into the slot, THEN enter. Otherwise you get disinfected. I am happy to say that it was Papa who learned this lesson.

The other lesson we learned today is that when you go into the Tobac store to buy a map, be sure to get one that has street names on it. What??? Really, now. No street names?

No matter. We found our hotel by walking down cute little cobblestone streets, bags wobbling behind us.

Papa just pronounced this shower way less quirky and wonderful.

Next dilemma....dinner. I'm sure we will manage. If there's food, we are sure to find it.