Saturday, June 9, 2012

Part way Home


Hello Folks,

We traveled with our bike group from our hotel in Vaison-la-Romaine by bus to the Avignon TGV Station. Since it was Saturday morning the traffic was pretty light and we made good time getting to the train station. The Avignon TGV station is a pretty easy place to travel to and from, they tell you exactly where the door to your train car is going to be several minutes before it arrives. They you hop on stow your luggage, and enjoy the ride.

Riding the TGV is a lot of fun, it is fast, fast, fast. For the speed they are traveling it is surprisingly smooth, except in the rest rooms which must be in the bumpiest part of the train. Not good considering the purpose why you would go into the rest room in the first place. When you hit even a tiny bump in the tracks at 250 miles per hour, it sounds like someone is trying to open the door with an axe, and then you are pitched back and forth. You need lightning quick reactions and good aim. We arrived in Paris, made a metro connection in the train station, and arrived at our hotel a couple of minutes later.

After doing our checking and getting our boarding passes for our flight home tomorrow, we jumped on the Metro and headed up to the Champs-Elysee. We did a little window shopping, and people watching, bought a little food and had an early supper on one of the prettiest streets in the world.

Champs-Elysee

Champs-Elysee

Expensive Purse
As we were walking back down the street we noticed a crowd gathering and went over to check it out. There was a local film festival, and a few of the actors were out saying “Hi” to the crowd. If we stayed around at the end of movies and read the credits, we could probably tell you who the actors were, but we did recognize Donald Sutherland.

Movie Star Guys
We came back to our hotel to get a little rested up. We turned on the TV for the first time in a couple of weeks and found a rugby match. Since one of the teams is Toulouse (Toulouse vs Toulon), I am sure my good friend Gilbert is watching as well and cheering for he home team. Rugby is kind of like a combination of American Football and team Sumo Wrestling. There is a lot of action because they don't stop playing just because the guy carrying the ball gets tackled, they just pick up the ball and start running with it, toss it to someone else, or kick it. There is a referee, but it seems like a pretty easy job, because it doesn't seem like there are a lot of rules (other than no fistfights). Anyway, Toulouse won – Yeah!

Time to sign off, going to bed a little early tonight, we will have a real long day tomorrow.

A few More Photos at this Picasa Link.

We hope you are all doing well,

Stephen & Linda

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