Leaving Barcelona for Paris

Yesterday George and Sha travelled on to England in the Eurostar seats they'd booked earlier. Before they left me in Paris, I too managed to reserve a seat on the London train, but not that one. Mine leaves on Friday. It took me a nerve wracking hour to make this booking on the Eurostar website; it was so overloaded that the pages kept blanking out. I believe mine was one of the last available seats, because when I went to the Gare du Nord to pick up my printed reservation card, a notice board said: no more seats available this week. I have been very lucky. I also have an Air Canada seat on the flight from London to Ottawa next Sunday. That one took me two hours' research, trial and error, using George's laptop in my hotel room in the middle of the night.

When we realised that both our flights were cancellada we made the big decision to rent a car (little Ford Fiesta, again, practically the last vehicle available from Hertz, costing over 1000 Euros) and take the road to Paris instead. We couldn't find a road map at the airport so set off very vaguely towards the only other city I'd heard of on the signposts, Girona, which I assumed was in the right direction. It was, but the road took us right through the centre of Barcelona, a tough start indeed for George in a car he wasn't at all used to. I wasn't able to take over since I've never learned how to drive with manual geers, so did my best to help with the navigation. Sha couldn't drive either, as her Chinese driver's licence is treated with suspicion over here. Anyway, we passed the city's bull ring (Plaza de Toros) and a giant architectural "gherkin" like the one in London and finally found ourselves, as if by magic, beyond the city on the correct road, Autopista 7. The speed limit was 130 kph until at various points we had to stop to pay a toll (scrabbling for coins in our purses). We stopped at the first service station we came to and bought a map of Francia (France).

After the Guardia Civil had waved us through the border in the Pyrennees, 30 km south of Perpignan, we paid another toll to get off the motorway, drove down some little roads across the salt flats (flamingos advertised, but we didn't see any) and stopped for a short walk in the sand on a Mediterranean beach at Port-la-Nouvelle near Narbonne. Driving on, we stayed overnight at a little 2-star hotel in Béziers, the Hotel de France. There was an Hotel d'Angleterre there too with 3 stars, but we didn't come across that one until later when we were walking around the old town under a crescent moon, near the floodlit fountains in the main square. Next morning we headed north through the vineyards (just coming into leaf) in the direction of Clermont Ferrand, crossing the beautiful Massif Central, 1000m above sea level, and the highest viaduct in the world, the Viaduc de Millau over the River Tarn. There too we stopped for a walk, parking at the Aire du Viaduc and impressive visitors' centre to climb a steep hill dotted with Alpine flowers for a view of the whole bridge.

Lunch in the Auvergne was at a nice grill house just off the road, with pine trees around us, and after that point the surroundings gradually became more and more northern, lambs, calves and windfarms beside the road. As we approached Paris, we became increasingly nervous. With no adequate map of the Paris roads, would we be able to find our way around the city to the northern side where we knew the Charles de Gaulle was situated? Actually they call it Roissy here, confusing, to say the least. I was sitting in front as navigator for this last stretch and decided that at each spaghetti junction we should simply follow the signposts to Lille, as the airport seemed to be more or less adjacent to the A1 to Lille. We got stuck in a traffic jam for a long time, but the plan worked; only as we got much closer to our destination did we see a signpost that actually said Charles de Gaulle airport, mind. We stopped just short (on now deserted approach roads, the airport being closed!) to fill the tank before returning our vehicle and when I got out of the car I found I was shaking with tension. We found the place to deposit our car and walked into an empty terminal, extraordinary.
Fortunately, the trains to the city were still running. After a couple of failed attempts I managed to call the hotel to let them know we were late, but still intending to arrive. We shared a carriage with a group of young men trying in vain to reach various other parts of Europe, then feeling exhausted and shaky I sat on a wall at the Gare du Nord with Sha while George stood with the luggage in the queue for our taxi. Once I was in my room (at the IBIS Bastille-Opera) I began to recover and came downstairs for a very late buffet supper at the hotel, while the other two set out to find a meal in the neighbourhood.

There's an album of my photos of the journey on Facebook.