Up up and away

The flight from Melbourne to Doha was uneventful.  For airline food it was ok and the service is always good.  We both watched stuff on the small screen for a while before attempting that elusive activity - sleep.  Sleeping tablets were duly taken and Wendy was out like a light.  Unfortunately in the fray of organising bedding and pillows, Wendy pinched both pillows so Tony was without all night and didn't sleep so well.  Suitable apologies were made in the morning.  We had about an hour on the ground in Doha before boarding the vehicle for the flight to Paris.  That too was uneventful.  May all flights be like that!  

The adventure started when we caught the RER train from the airport to Paris city.  It was an express and we were a bit concerned that it wouldn't stop at the station we wanted which was St Michel-Notre Dame.  It did stop though so that bit was ok.  However we wanted to change to the metro and that proved to be a test of our ability to get out of mazes.  Needless to say we failed and had to ask for help.  In the past we've found that station people in Paris are not so helpful but this guy was and what's more spoke good English.  So with a slight change in plan from the original we found our way to Montparnasse which the took us about 10 minutes of going up stairs and down stairs to get out of. Tempers were getting a little frayed and the bags were getting heavier.  Fortunately when we finally surfaced our hotel appeared about 50 metres from the exit.

Once we dumped our bags we went searching for the platform from which our train goes tomorrow and the for an Orange shop to add credit to our French mobile sim.  That seems to be ok but time will tell.....

The alternate finger writes on the wall:

We have an iPad app called Fooding- le Guide France 2013. In brief , it reads your (French) location from the iPad  GPS and suggests all the known hot foodie joints nearby with brief descriptions. So it came to pass that within 50 metres of our Ibis Montparnasse hotel we dined at a tiny place  ( seats about 12) run and staffed by two ladies on a host offer basis. La  Cabane a huitres (accents omitted) gave us a dozen Bordeaux oysters each, unlimited bread, foie gras for me and smoked magret (duck) breast for Wendy, glasses of white and red Bordeaux, a simple cheese plate, and a rum cake. A good cure for jet lag.