Cass had a company day off last Friday, so we made a quick plan to visit Paris for the weekend. There is a high-speed train that goes from Zürich to Paris in a little over 4 hrs, so we booked tickets. We splurged on first class tickets, and the cost for round trip was about 650CHF, so about the same as plane tickets might have been. Turns out that it was actually regular-speed from Zürich to Basel (and Mulhouse and Belfort in France), then high-speed from Mulhouse to Paris.

In Basel, a grandmother, mom, and girl got on and the mom and daughter sat across the table from us. They were all speaking French to each other. The mom kept telling us (in English) that they would move to give us more space once the train departed. But it was pretty crowded, so they stayed in their reserved seats. Once we left Basel, the girl (Philippa) pulled out a math workbook and started doing fractions. I glanced at it, and she was doing her math homework in German. And then the mom starts answering math questions in German! Holy crap. I’m worried that I didn’t test at A1 level in the fide test last week, and this woman is speaking 3 languages and doing German math!

I also splurged on the hotel room and got us a suite on the top floor of Hotel Lumen. It was so great, we had a tiny toilet closet, a tiny bathroom, a tiny bedroom, and a tiny living room.

The Louvre:

Palace of Versailles:

Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame:

This was my/our second visit to Paris. The first time in 2004, we did a 1 day whirlwind tour with 3 toddlers (6 yrs, 4 yrs, and 1.5 yrs) in tow. Needless to say, this trip was sooooo much more enjoyable. And having 2 days to see the sights was much better. Louvre tickets were the only ones I booked in advance, all the other stuff was spur-of-the-moment. Maybe booking Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower tickets would have been smart, but I’m not very big on going up on high things, so I was ok with skipping those lines and just walking around instead. Also, 4 hrs is just about the limit for train ride length for me.