Frazier Family Travels: Day 14: Geneva and Paris

Day 14 said goodbye to Lausanne and hello to Paris. We planned to catch an early train to Paris so we could get in a full day of touring, but our preferred train was sold out. We did not expect this and it's the first time this trip we've experienced something like this. So, the ticket agent found us a train to Paris originating from Geneva.

We took the Geneva train and had a 3 hour lay over in Geneva. So, we walked around Geneva for a while to see a few things, including the signature fountain in Lake Geneva.

Fountain in Lake Geneva.

We shopped at a grocery store for a picnic lunch and some snacks for the Paris train ride. While shopping, we decided to look for an English language book store. We need this because everyone has finished the books we packed and none of the small cities we've visited sell books in English. The Geneva tourist info folks directed us to a nearby international book store and everyone re-stocked.

On the train to Paris, Owen could not put down his latest installment of "Skulduggery Pleasant." Garrett is reading the first installment of the Young James Bond series. It is terrific that they've both embraced reading tough books.

Reading time on the train to Paris.

Meanwhile, April and I enjoyed the offerings of the bar car...

The train to Paris passed through mainly agricultural areas. It was pretty country side, like the trip from Bern to Lausanne.

We pulled into Gare de Lyon train station in Paris and found the tourist information office.

At Gare de Lyon.

We have booked the same hotel room for 6 nights, so we were excited to end the packing/unpacking routine. Quite luckily, our hotel is within walking distance from Gare de Lyon, so we didn't need to figure out the metro subway system yet.

Our hotel is near the Bastille monument, so we expect this area to be crazy on July 14, Bastille Day.

Bastille monument.

Owen at Bastille monument, wearing his Rush concert t-shirt to honor Rush's song, "Bastille Day."

We're staying at the Lyon Mulhouse hotel. Basic hotel, within steps of the Bastille metro stop, which will be handy.

When we got to the hotel, we noticed a few key differences. Garrett, in particular, learned an important lesson about where to wash your hands. Not in the bidet, please...

Garrett's favored wash basin.

Once we unpacked and got our bearings, we walked the neighborhood looking for an interesting restaurant. The tourist information suggest going to the Marais district, just west of us. We headed that direction and found many narrow, old streets with every choice of restaurant imaginable. We opted for a Spanish tapas restaurant. Everyone enjoyed it, including the chocolate cake and the vanilla ice cream with honey and almonds.

After dinner, we walked to Place de Vosges, a park since the early 1600's. The park is surrounding by a series of uniform townhomes where 34 successive French kings lived. We relaxed in the park on a mild night until they closed the park.