Day 3: Paris + Train ride to Biarritz

Eiffel Tower with these guys

After a good 10 hours of sleep, the family was able to get up and move like normal people again.  We got somewhat of a late start, but were able to grab a taxi to go to see the Eiffel Tower as soon as we could.  We learned today that it’s and extra €3 for the 4^th person in a taxi and an extra €6 for the 5^th person.  That’s where all those extra fees were coming from…  Anyways, once we got to the Eiffel Tower on a Saturday, we realized we probably weren’t going to make it up in the tower.  We took some tourist pictures a little farther away from the tower and said that was enough for now.  Our new quest: find brunch.

We walked along several Rue de (insert street name here) trying to make our way to the Arc de Triomphe.  We stopped to take a picture at one of my future workplace’s signs, Barclays, which I thought was cool.  We walked down the famous Avenue de Champs-Elysees and decided to eat at George V.  A bottle of Coke was only €6! Mom and Dad got a ham, cheese, and egg sandwich that they really liked whereas I got a simple ham and cheese sandwich.  Again, all of our drinks were served in glass bottles, even the mineral water.  Since it was a more tourist area, we didn’t see as many French people as we did at our first meal out.

Arc de Triomphe with the brothers

 Since our train was set to leave at 2:26 pm, we didn’t have much time to spend sightseeing. We hurried over to see the Arc de Triomphe by walking through an underground tunnel.There was no walking across that traffic circle that surrounded it unless you wanted to get run over. We took a few pictures of that and then spent way too long trying to get a cab to take all 5 of us. We ended up splitting up into two taxis because we didn’t want to be late for our train. Once we arrived back at the hotel, we picked up our bags and walked 4 blocks to the train station which was very similar to the rails in New Jersey. We arrived in plenty of time for our train and had little trouble getting on the 2:26 pm train to Biarritz, France.

The train ride took 5 hours to go from Paris to Biarritz, but we travelled through some interesting areas along the way.  Most of the scenery included farmland and a few small towns.  However, the unique part of the train ride came when we began to ride through Bordeaux and see tons of vineyards.  Who knew that France was covered in that many grapes?  The worst part of the trip was the fact that we were facing backwards the whole time.  The best part of the trip was watching Nick and Dad try to talk French to a guy named Xavier that Nick was sitting to next on the train.  We found out that he loves watching American basketball, especially the San Antonio Spurs.  Too bad they already lost to OKC…  The main takeaway was that Dad couldn’t make sentences as well as he thought and that we needed more batteries for our handheld electronic translator.

Our new home for the week!

When we finally arrived, we got to see one French guy holding up our name on a sign to take us to the house from the train station.  First time for me!  It was €35 to drive 5 minutes to the house. Worth it? The house was a really nice duplex with 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.  The tv setup was lacking severely but we just used it to watch Mission Impossible 2 later that night. 

Once the guy in charge of the house finished showing us around, we headed out to find food close to the beach.  The beach was only a 5 minute walk, but we kept walking around to see as much as we could the first night.  The waves we saw were huge – too bad the temperature was around 55 and deterred us from wanting to do anything in the water.  We finally sat down to eat around 9:00 pm, typical Turgeon dinner time.  I ordered some duck fillet which was very tasty.  We split our first bottle of Bordeaux wine for dinner between the 5 of us. Yes, even Lucas was able to have some because the drinking age is 16. As dinner was finishing up, it started pouring rain so we had to share the 3 umbrellas we had brought to make it back on the dreary night.  However, I still felt like this place was going to be a lot of fun provided the weather lightened up a bit.  Day 3 – finished.