Paris

Our 4 days in Barcelona were pretty hectic - so much to see! It's a fabulous city; full of gorgeous buildings and tree-lined boulevards; and a fun atmosphere with lots of people - tourists and locals - cycling and walking everywhere. And the late nights! We were starting to get close to keeping Spanish time - although a midnight finish is probably still early for them.

We wanted to visit a concert hall as it looked really amazing in the postcards. A guided tour was 10 euro. At the booking desk we noticed they had a piano concert on the following day with tickets from 9 euro each. So instead of a guided tour of the concert hall we went to a concert instead :) The pianist actually studied in New Zealand and went to University in Auckland!!

From Barcelona we wanted to get a train to Paris. The guy at the train station immediately said "there are no trains that take bikes to Paris". We bought a local train ticket to get us into France and decided to sort it from there. We arrived in the border town of Cerbere to be told no trains were running at all - because of the strike in France. So we biked up the French coastline for 25km to the pretty town of Collieurs, famous for being an artistic place. We were wandering around the cute narrow medieval streets of the town (with all our gear) when suddenly it started to bucket down. We sheltered under a gelateria veranda (tempted to buy an icecream but couldn't face paying 2.50 euro ($5) for a single scoop). It was fascinating watching the heavy rain cascading down and the follow-on effects of it. Drains were gushing water straight onto the paved streets - no curbside drains like in NZ. Shopkeepers were making the most of the water by scrubbing the pavement outside their shops.

The helpful lady at the train station reiterated that none of the trains going into Paris take bikes - unless they are in a bag. "Do you have a bike bag?" "No, but I can make one", I replied. She looked at me rather doubtfully and warned that the conductor would turn us away if it wasn't in a bag. We paid the $100 euro each for the fast TGV train to Paris and then set off to find a 'bike bag'. In the first supermarket I found exactly what I was looking for - huge 240L rubbish bin liners. We were all set. The plan was to catch the 6:57am local train to the city of Perpignan, where we had just 13 minutes transit time to catch the fast train to Paris. As you can already guess, the local train arrived late, seriously cutting into the already close timing - to get off the first train, find the second train AND bag the bikes.... We arrived in Perpignan station and ran with our loaded bikes into the station to find out our next platform. Then it was down the stairs and back up the other side to our platform - Joy commented it's amazing how light the fully loaded bike suddenly is when there is time pressure! The conductor saw our bikes and immediately said "no velo". "J'ai fait housse!" I kept saying. ("I have a bag!"). He looked at our ticket and said something rapidly in french and pointed to the end of the train. We ran down to the end carriage and wrenched the pannier bags off our bikes and started to put the bikes into the rubbish bags. We had an audience of bemused army officers and passengers watching us. I was unaware of the conductor yelling at us until I saw him grab our luggage scattered on the platform and throw it on the train. Then he grabbed my half-bagged bike and threw that on too. Only then did I realise we were holding up the train.... We climbed on board with all our gear sprawled on the floor, the bikes unbagged, and just grinned at each other "We made it! We're off to Paris!"

It was a great train ride. We were in the upstairs portion of the carriage. It was smooth and had few stops. (We are used to the slow regional trains that stop all the time and seem to have no suspension). We arrived in Paris at lunchtime.

We are staying at the campground on the outskirts of Paris. The reception lady was so lovely and enthusiastic "You must stay for Saturday night as it is the music festival, there will be music on the streets everywhere!"

The following day we cycled into the city and carefully locked our bikes with our two bike locks beside some other bikes, to an iron railing. We jumped on the Hop On Hop Off tourist bus for the day. It's a relaxing way to see a city - don't need to worry about traffic or deciding where to go next. We got back to the bikes at about 7pm to find only mine there. Both locks had been cut. My bike was sitting essentially unlocked for goodness-knows-how-long. We filed a police report and have started looking for a new bike for Joy. Today we spent on the tourist bus again and we can't help but 'look out' for Joy's bike - we keep thinking we see it, even when it's clearly not hers. We're also noticing that all the bike locks are those superduper heavy un-cuttable U-locks. We've bought a U-lock now. It's heavy!!! We have a few more days in Paris before heading to Amsterdam.