We woke up at our hotel in Barcelona and headed to the train station. Because we didn’t know what to expect, we arrived at the train station 45 minutes early. There wasn’t much of a waiting area, I guess Spaniards don’t arrive early very often. Still, the train station was clean and there was no graffiti. You did have to pass through airport style security, complete with X-rayed luggage. Then they had all of the passengers for the entire train line up cattle style, then pushed all of us into the train at once.
We soon boarded the train and it headed off to France. The train was nice, and since we paid for first class tickets, we got comfortable seats and were seated on the upper deck, surrounded by large windows.
It was a beautiful ride, and the GPS in my phone said we were moving along at 120 miles per hour for most of the trip. It seems like there was a castle about every half a mile or so.
We soon arrived in Paris and took a cab to the hotel. It was rather chilly outside, 46 degrees. There were low clouds that looked a lot like it was about to snow, but I know it was too warm for that. What this did mean for us, was that it would rain every single day we were there.
When we arrived at the hotel, my wife’s true genius at this sort of thing finally made sense. Some of you asked how we managed to turn time share presentations into a free stay, and this is how she did it. We always stay at Hilton hotels. Whenever you do that, you are always approached by someone who offers you 100,000 honors points (Hilton Honors is the company’s loyalty program) or more for listening to their pitch. My wife would say yes, and we would be roped in to a 3 hour time share pitch. Once, she even booked a stay at Myrtle Beach, for which she got even more points. Again, another time share spiel. All told, she earned (we earned) over 2 million points in less than two years.
When she was planning this trip, she found a nice hotel in Paris that was part of the Hilton system and cashed in half a million points for a 5 night stay. When I say this was a nice hotel, I mean when you walk into the lobby, they offer you canapes and champaign while you wait for them to check you in and get your bags to your room. The place was really nice. She was determined to make this trip memorable, because we have been together for twelve years and married for ten.
Once we were in our room, we went to dinner.
Looking at the wine list, I wanted a Riesling, and they wouldn’t only sell non-French wines by the bottle. The wine was 54 Euros for the bottle, and (French) Onion Soup was 15 Euros.
That price was a bit of a shock, but everything, and I do mean everything, in Europe was expensive. Gasoline was 2 Euro per liter, which works out to $8 per gallon. Still, a crock of onion soup costing $20 explains how they afford “free” healthcare, and also explains how Europeans stay so thin.
Dinner was duck confit, followed by a shared crepe for dessert.
In all, dinner was about 180 Euros- yeah. That’s $220 American dollars for dinner, even if you don’t count the wine, the dinner was more than $150.
We walked a block back to the hotel and arrived to find the bed had been turned down, and cans of spring water were left on each bedside table and some jazz was playing in the room. Oddly enough, the song was c’est si bon. Nice touch.
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