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| Double windows and thick walls keep the hotel room quiet at the airport. |
From Saint-Emilion, we said farewell to our host and made the drive back to Bordeaux to turn in the rental car and catch the TGV back to Paris.
Unlike our disastrous experience acquiring the car, the return was a breeze once I found some instructions in the glove box - a QR code for navigation and some photos of key turns to get to the correct level of the garage. The ramp was steep and curved narrowly; this was as likely a place to damage the car as any other we encountered on our whole tour.
On the train, we found our seats already occupied. Someone pulled a switcheroo and rather than insisting on our seats, we ended up separated. I was in the window seat sharing a table with a family, adults, but everyone was pretty quiet so it wasn't too awkward.
Arriving in Paris, we secured transportation to our departure airport. Our last nights were booked at the Sheraton hotel at Charles de Gaulle airport.
We did this to have a buffer day in case of train or other delays, and because our departure was for an early morning flight, from the same terminal as the hotel. We did not want to stay one night in the city and then move again.
From the Paris Montparnasse station, you can take the metro a few stops to meet the RER B line to Charles de Gaulle airport. But with our oversized bags, we chose rather to take a taxi from outside the station.
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| Sightseeing at Charles de Gaulle. |
The driver delivered us to the hotel entrance, whereas with transit, we would have had to walk some ways again with our copious gear. We have been debriefing about what items we needed but didn't have on the trip, and also about what items we had and didn't use.
It is hard to pack properly when you don't know what the weather will do. During this trip, it stayed warmer and dryer than expected. We found we had too many long pants and not enough short-sleeved shirts.
I also thought I had carefully chosen mix-and-match items, but that turned out less well than I hoped, so I have a little work, and maybe some shopping, to do on that front.
Crossing Paris by car, we could see that fall had arrived in the month we had been touring. The sky was cloudy and low, it was cool, and trees were red and yellow.
Our room at the Sheraton was nice. It was big, with a giant bed, but more importantly, it was quiet.
The windows were doubled and from that, you could also view the thickness of the walls. We heard hardly any airport noise. Additionally, the halls have a thick carpeting that muffles interior noise as well - surely in the airport there are people checking in and out at all hours.
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| We had to finish this bottle since we couldn't take it with us. We had to. |
We explored the airport looking for dining, but the best options were beyond the security checkpoint and we didn't have our boarding passes yet, so we just got a meat and cheese board with wine at the Sheraton lounge, Le Galaxy.
In the morning we grabbed breakfast at an airport shop, then returned to the room to reconfigure our bags for flying.
Next, we hit the gym and it was among the best I have seen in a hotel. They had 5 or 6 pieces for cardio, weight stacks and dumbbells, and some nice body-weight pieces like a Roman chair and power tower. I made sure not to overdo it though - I didn't want to be too sore to be comfortable on the flight.
We wanted to do some re-con for our flight, since we thought we should be checking in for it around 5am and I know I am not a morning person. We thought this would be quick and then we could take the train to see some part of Paris we had missed.
We were so wrong about this.
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| Pasta with lots of black and white truffle. |
We knew we were in the correct terminal for our departure. But we could find the airline desk nowhere. We followed signs that seemed to lead to a deadend. We went back the other way. Finally we spotted some stairs down, and found many more airline counters.
Here is where we would need to come in the morning to drop our bags. This took much longer than we thought it would, and we were really happy to not have been doing it in the morning with all our luggage in tow.
By this time we had pretty much lost our steam for going back into the city. It seemed like such a hassle, with nearly an hour each way. We had been traveling for nearly six weeks and honestly by this point we wanted to relax.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I'm embarrassed to admit that we spent about 36 hours at the airport. On the other hand, I'd highly recommend it.
For dinner we again confined ourselves to Terminal 2, so we tried out the Sheraton's restaurant, Brasserie Les Saisons. It was surprisingly good.
We chilled out in the room, had a good night's sleep, then got up and out in the morning for the long trip home.
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