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Well, first class on the TGV is no great shakes. Certainly not as good as third class on the Spanish trains, with their free headphones, films and constantly updated information on where you are and how hot it is outside the confines of the air-con.

You do get a wider seat, of course, but beyond that you little more than a slightly better class of screaming child in the seat beside you, and a more carefully groomed French dog under the seat in front of you. All the toilets but two were either blocked, or had broken locks on the doors, and the buffet car was smoky and unpleasant.

Still, Paris was fun, although I did make the mistake of buying some very stinky cheese in Galleries Lafayette. By the time I’d walked as far as the Champs Elysee in the noonday sun it reeked to high heaven, and as I took it back to Gare du Nord on the metro, a man sitting opposite actually pinched his nose to keep out the pong (albeit quite discretely).

The Eurostar was broken, too. Or at least carriages 15 and 17, so they piled us all in coach 18, where it quickly got very snug. Still, not quite as snug as those two broken carriages, which were devoid of air conditioning and quickly ramped up to Turkish Bath-like levels of heat.

I could happily have gone on travelling for another week or two - especially after two days of doing absolutely nothing under a pure blue, cloudless Provencal sky - but it is good to be home, and to have a washing machine, my own bathroom, my own kitchen, my own bed…

Now all I need is a week’s-worth of sleep and I’ll be ready to get on with life again.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 23rd, 2004 at 11:54 pm and is filed under Europe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.