The Adventure Begins

Long before we boarded Air France on the way to Barcelona via Paris, I have made inquiries on how to maximize our 6-hour layover in Charles de Gaulle. My sources? Yahoo Answers (where I always get accurate information in the past), co-workers who have been to Paris, other travel sites. All of them said with six hours, you can do it, with heavy reservations. My co-workers even went as far as saying it would be near impossible.

But they did not know me and my husband. When he zooms in on a goal, he will be hell bent on achieving it. And boy was I glad. I didn't think it would be possible to be honest with you. But we had to do it. The other option was to sit out the 6 hours in CDG, which was unacceptable. We have gone to the lengths of arranging this itinerary to include Paris, since we are going in this region anyway. We had to see Paris (as much as our limited time would allow).

(Train from airport to Paris center - busker inside train, a first for me)

Armed with research about Paris trains and the stops we needed to take for each sight we wanted to see, we first stopped at the Tourist Information Desk - a must when traveling - for additional information that we might have missed on our extensive research. The lady at the Tourist Information Desk was very helpful and in her deliciously heavy French-accented English confirmed what everyone else have told us - it's very difficult, nearly impossible, to see Paris in that little time. Train from airport to Paris is 45 minutes one way. And here's the kicker - there is a transport strike in Paris which would mean that the train we would be taking from the airport will not reach Paris center. A transfer was required in order to see the city, which means more delay, less sights to see.

With specific instructions on which station to transfer and what platform to take, we ran from the desk to the train station, which is a looong way. I don't mean to whine, but I was carrying a very heavy back pack. I felt like I was backpacking and running in a foreign city. I don't watch the Amazing Race but I felt like that's what hubs and I were on that day.

(Busker collecting "tips". We gave him $, he asked for euro. $ is very weak when we visited *sad* nobody wanted $)

Imagine our delight when the we found the train waiting for passengers. We got good seats and pretty soon the train was moving. We found a group of Americans on the train and from their conversations I learned they are on a layover too. Their final destination was Cairo.

From the window I managed to take some shots. Graffitis are universal I guess.

It's fall in Paris. One of the images I took as the train passes by on the way to Paris.

So, with limited time to explore Paris, can you guess which three sights we managed to visit and take photos of before we barely made it to the Barcelona-bound plane that evening?

This post is for MY WORLD. Fellow players, I know that I have always posted on my other blog, but the Christmas season is making it very difficult for me to maintain two blogs.