Day 35 Paris to Montpellier via TGV train

Eurostar from London to Paris, TGV Paris to Montpellier

This train jouney was pretty epic. Starting from London on the Eurostar at 0830 and finishing at 1930 (by the time we got to our accommodation in Montpellier.)  Most people would've been quite tired by such a long voyage involving two trains and two taxi rides, but both Barb and Susan are afflicted by arthritis, which makes all that walking (lugging bags and climbing in and out of trains) super challenging and exhausting.

 John was a trooper (undeniably true!) and managed the heaviest burden of bags as well as heaving wife and sister in and out of vehicles as necessary. My hero!

The taxi ride through Paris is always fun (not) with
mopeds and motorbikes weaving through busy traffic

We eventually got from Gare du Nord, where Eurostar comes in, around
to Gare de Lyon, where the TGV train to Montpellier goes out

After Parisien traffic Barb is ever so happy to be at Gare de Lyon,
which is enormous, still in one piece

Gare de Lyon is a pretty big station too 

Very busy with foot traffic in the halls here

We killed some time in a cafe for lunch, then sat in Hall 2 waiting for our platform to
be announced. Then came the mad rush to board even though there's assigned seating

The train jouney is done at a very high speed - 245 kph just cruising along. Train Grande Vitesse does what it says on the packet! The journey is quite comfortable, but we are all still very fatigued by the time we arrived. Where was our afternoon siesta I ask you? Disappointingly it is also raining and bleak when we get to Montpellier. We stagger to a taxi and the very rude driver didn't want to take us because, he said, it was close enough to walk. It isn't .... and we couldn't. Especially not in the rain and burdened by all the luggage.

We are all losing the will to live by the time we reach the apartment. John retrieves the key as per the video instructions they'd e-mailed us on Saturday, but which bloody apartment is it? Nothing to indicate it on the key itself. Eventually we realised there were additional instructions sent at midday today while we were on the train (true but not totally fair - we had only part read earlier messages. It's good to scroll down the page!). Great! We fall into Unit 5 on the second floor. At least the lift worked.

The apartment is light and airy

Our bedroom is large and comfortable

The second bedroom a little less big and comfortable and strangely had a
wardrobe full of clothes and food, blocked in any case by a large baby's cot

The kitchen is small but basically functional - even a dishwasher

The bathroom/laundry is likewise functional but small.
Not sure how two people could fit nin to use two sinks!

The balcony is spacious and private thanks to
the trees and the traffic not too noisy

Initially we were a bit thrown by some of the idosyncracies of this apartment. Obviously it is usually someone's home and there is a lot of personal stuff such as clothing filling the cupboards, which we found very weird. We eventually located most of the things we needed for a cuppa although there's no kettle, so we boiled a pan of water on the stove. Fortunately there is a small corner store across the road for essentials and a bigger Lidyl supermarket a few hundred metres down the road.

It's not perfect, but it will meet our needs adequately for this trip. We're almost crying tired by now, and fall into bed. Tomorrow's another day.