From Nantes to Paris

I let Peter sleep in today because our train was at 1:00, and we didn't have a whole lot going on before then. We had breakfast in the room (the breakfast at the hotel was overpriced) and then wondered about town a bit, and sat and hung out at a coffee shop. We got to the train station early because Peter wanted to play the piano, after a crazy homeless person who was banging on the piano left; he played for about an hour before our train left. Another kid his age came up and sang along while Peter played.

Getting on the train, and getting the bikes on the train was pretty straightforward. There was only one other person in our compartment, and they were all kinds of employees around who were helpful in terms of where to put the bike. Unfortunately our seats were facing away from the direction of travel, which was a little disconcerting. Also many times you couldn't actually see the countryside, because there were so many trees right next to the train tracks. But overall very straightforward. I keep on thinking about those two German guys that we met, who said they couldn't get tickets with bikes on a fast train, to get back to Germany, so they were taking a full THREE days to get back to Germany, arriving at 9:00 p.m. at night. Either they were very unlucky, or we were very lucky. 

Biking from the train station (Montparnasse) to the hotel, on the left bank, was supposed to take 22 minutes according to Google maps, of course it took us much longer what was trying to figure things out and work our way through traffic. But overall everything went okay, a little stressful with all the traffic. The hotel is the same brand as we had in Nantes, the Apart City, which has a tiny little kitchenette. It's nothing fancy, but it's in the same neighborhood we are in before, which is reasonable, and I didn't want to spend too long finding the absolute perfect place. We ended up going to Bercy Village again, and actually had dinner at the same place as before, the sushi place.