My journey back to London from Santiago turned into more
of an adventure than I had bargained for. The train ride to
the French border was easy enough, though very slow. It was
fast enough, though, that I felt disconcerted to watch how
quickly we passed by some of the toughest kilometers
between Burgos and León. All I could think about was
trudging along the stony roads for hours and hours, trying
not to think about how much my feet hurt.
Eventually we reached the
border at close to midnight. I found my couchette on the
French train and waited for us to move. Shortly before we
left, a rock band invaded the compartment and stacked their
instruments, travel bags and themselves in every remaining
bit of space. I didn't get much sleep that night, though
they were fairly considerate. We were fortunate that the
train didn't make any sudden stops because the instrument
cases might have come crashing down the floor (I was on a
bottom bunk).
We reached Paris early in
the morning. I gathered my things and staggered out of the
station. I had 17 hours before my coach left for London
from the opposite side of the city. I still had a lot of
food from Santiago, so I had breakfast of bread, yogurt,
chocolate and fruit. I was nearly halfway across Paris on
the Metro after breakfast when I realized that my staff,
which I had carried with from St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port despite
everyone telling me I ought to have a better stick, was
still leaning up against the pipes in the WC at the train
station where I had left it immediately after getting off
the train. I decided that I didn't want to spend the time
to go back to the station, so I resigned myself to saying
good-bye to my trusty staff. I thought that I might go back
to the station if I had time later in the day. I wasn't
sure what I would have done with it for the remainder of
the day, in any event. It was much too long to fit in a
locker at the train station. My pack was so full that it
barely fit in the locker, itself. I left my pack at the
Gare du Nord, which was the closest station to my coach
terminal, and set out for the Louvre on foot. I tried to
get some francs from a money machine, but something was
wrong and I kept getting the message that my bank wouldn't
authorize the transfer of funds. I tried another and wasn't
successful there, either. I finally gave up and visited a
Thomas Cooke office near the Opera that offered slightly
better rates than the office in the station. I decided to
get just enough to last the day since I didn't to lose any
more money changing francs in London or San
Francisco.
