TGV to Paris

 1/12/2025

It is time to leave Bordeaux and travel on to Paris to join up with our Viking River Cruise. We have to brave the high speed train once again, this time from St Jean Station which seems to be a bit more straightened than the procedure at Barcelona.

Our train doesn’t leave until 10 .46 am, and it is only a little over 2 hours to Paris from Bordeaux. As we look at the monitor in the station to see which platform our train will leave from, we are a bit disheartened by the growing list of trains before us that are delayed. However, it is our lucky day, and our train is on time.

Fighting your way to the platform with a lot of luggage is not easy, and the passage ways are narrow, but we succeed, have our tickets scanned, and head off in search of our first class car. You now wait in the queue to get on board with people searching for places to put their luggage. There is very little space.

First class is up a narrow staircase and to get you and your large suitcase up it is difficult at best, and then you need to find somewhere to put it. Victorious in completing this obstacle course, we look forward to settling into our seat. However, we find a young French lady sitting in one of our seats and despite our insistence it is our seat, she appears unmoved. We initially think it must be our mistake and go to check we are in the correct car. Once we confirm we are, we go back to confront her again and she eventually gets up and leaves after a person in a neighbouring seat looks at our ticket and confirms they are our seats.

I think we are getting too old for this sort of drama and giving the trains a miss in future looks like a less stressful approach.

The train ride itself was good. It was an express service non stop to Paris Montparnasse Station. We were in no hurry to get off and let most of the other passengers rush off ahead of us, so we could take our time getting our 2 large suitcases back down the stairs. It is a long walk through a very crowded station to find a taxi, but there was zero waiting time, and 25 minutes later we were at the Hyatt Regency Paris Etoile Hotel, where we meet the Viking representative. Today is the official start of our Viking trip, with 2 nights in Paris before we board our ship.

Once checked in and settled, we go for a walk to find something to eat, as it is now around 1.45 pm. It is quite cold and the chance of rain is imminent.


This weather information in a shop window confirms that it is cold

We are in the 17th Arrondissement, next to the  Conference Centre, and wander through a few surrounding  streets where there are many restaurant options, but we are just looking for something light.




A nice Boulangerie would fit the bill and there are a few to choose from, and we choose well, settling for a “sandwich” and coffee.

The food was very filling , but we did resist the pastries on display. We continued walking around the neighbourhood watching local vendors do their final Christmas decorations and there are Christmas trees for sale everywhere. 


The trees are real and a work of art, trimmed, and mounted on a wooden base and wrapped in mesh for easy transport


A Christmas tree wrapper to apply the plastic mesh


A local backstreet restaurant Chez Fred


A garden over an underground carpark


View from our hotel room

Well rested by 6 pm, we ventured out fr a pre dinner drink and then a search to find somewhere to eat.

Across the road from the hotel is a bar called The Canadian Embassy Pub, and our curiousity got the better of us and we decided to have a pre dinner drink there. It was very busy, but we got a couple of seats at the bar. Whilst there were a lot of US /Canadian accents here, it also seems to have strong local support.


Canadian Embassy Bar

Our search for dinner took us a little further away, where we settled on an Italian restaurant, Da Franco. We met another couple there on the table next us that were also doing a Viking river cruise,but in their case to Normandy.  The food was good and quite a bit more expensive than Bordeaux.


No French wines were on the wine list, only Italian, so our wine choice was from Chianti, and hadn’t been in the bottle for long, but was very drinkable.


Tomorrow morning we have a morning tour of Paris, as part of the Viking package.





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