It’s time to say “au revoir” to Paris. We packed our bags, tidied up the apartment, and put the key in a lock box. Outside on the street, a taxi was waiting for us. The driver took us to the famous old train station called “Gare de Lyon.” It’s sad to leave Paris, but at the same time, it’s exciting to be off to someplace new.
Gare de Lyon
Gare de Lyon is… hold on… you’ll want to know how to pronounce this. A “gare” is a train station. It’ll come in handy, because we expect to be going to a lot of “gares,” in the days to come.
“Gare” rhymes with “car.” Easy. Now when you say “Lyon”, the “Ly” rhymes with “me.” Finish it off with the soft “n” sound, (as in “honh honh!”), which you have, no doubt, mastered by now.
Now take those two parts and smash them together into one syllable: “lyonh.” It shouldn’t sound like you’re calling out to a guy named Leon. Do the same thing with the “de” in the middle. Just sort of smash them together a little bit. The whole thing should sound like, “gar-d-lyonh.”
Gare de Lyon is a classic-looking building built for the World Exposition of 1900. All trains leaving Gare de Lyon head for southeastern destinations. (There are six other train stations in Paris). When we were there, I had the feeling that we were in an old spy movie or something.
Le TGV
We already had our tickets, so all we had to do was punch them. Then we’d find a place to sit and wait for our train track to appear on the big electronic board. There’s no way of knowing which track a departing train will be on until 20 minutes before departure time.
At exactly 20 minutes prior to departure, track assignments will appear on the electronic board. At that moment, everyone expecting to be on one of those trains starts heading to their respective tracks. The trains will be waiting there, engines humming.
We found our train, then walked down alongside it until we found our car. I heaved our bags up into the car and stashed them in big open shelves by the door. Then we went and sat down in our assigned seats They were roomy and comfortable. Ahhhh. Time to de-stress a bit.
More people got on, one by one for the next 5 or 10 minutes, and after about 10 minutes everyone was on who was going to get on. It was so quiet in the car, you could have heard a pin drop.
Another five minutes went by, then it was time to leave. At the exact minute that the train was scheduled to leave, we started moving. If our eyes had been closed, we wouldn’t even have known. There was no sound or feeling. We just started drifting along as if we were on ice.
We’re taking the high-speed train called the TGV. (It’s pronounced “tay-zshay-vay”, which stands for Train à Grand Vitesse). It takes one hour and 35 minutes to get to Dijon, which is 163 miles away, so the average speed is 103 miles per hour. That includes the time when they slow down, coming into and leaving the stations, so I bet the top speed must be somewhere around 130 or 140 mph. That’s moving right along, eh?
Bonjour Dijon!
Dijon isn’t a very big city. The population is on the order of 150,000. The train station has a small-town feel to it. Quite a change from Paris!
We caught a taxi at the train station and gave the driver the address of an apartment we had reserved. He took off and went down all kinds of winding little streets. Our apartment was in the old, historic part of town, hence the narrow, winding little streets.
After a 10-minute ride, we pulled up in front of a set of large red doors in a nondescript concrete wall. This was the street, and this was the address. We guessed this must be it. We paid the driver. He went on his way, and there we were, standing there with our bags by the large red doors.
It wasn’t exactly clear to us what to do next. We found a button that looked like it would be a good one, and gave it a push. We might have pushed a few more, too. None of them seemed to have any effect. I played with the handle to see if the doors were unlocked. Nope. All locked up.
Right about that time the gate from the inside. A lady appeared and welcomed us in. She had been wrapped up in something and couldn’t get to the gate as fast as she would have liked to. Her husband wasn’t far behind her.
Our hosts were a couple about our age who we liked immediately. They gave us a nice welcome, (in english), and invited us into a courtyard. Then they showed us in to what would be our apartment for the next four days.
Well, we’d made it to Dijon. Now let’s see what this apartment is going to be like!
To be continued…
Featured photo: Gare de Lyon, Paris: Johann “nojhan” Dréo/Wikimedia Commons
