Idlemind - nickcoster.com
Future gazing from a quiet corner of cyberspace.

It is nearly 1pm in a little suburban area on the outskirts off Paris, on the way to Versailles. I am going to try and get myself into the city by public transport. I need to wait until 20 minutes past one to get the bus. Here are a couple of photos of the view from the bus-stop. Very quaint. I am going for a quick stroll while I wait for the bus.

Lovely little streets. It is clichéd but nice. Every one is shopping at the markets and patisserie and leaving with the long French bread rolls. The markets look just like a local growers market, with flowers, fish, meats and verges as well as a clothing rack.

Still 10 minutes before the bus arrives. Looking at the intersection in front of me reminds me to be careful when crossing the street here. People drive on the right here so that means that I am in mirror land where everything is flipped around. So as a pedestrian I need to make very sure to look in every direction when crossing the road. It is also hot and the bus stop is indirect sun.

It is 1:45pm. I just realized that I was sitting at the wrong bus stop. Live and learn I guess. I have also learned how to read a French bus time table as a result. Believe it or not there are weekend timetables that differ from weekdays. Surprise, surprise!

Basically I just missed the first bus at 1pm because I was at the wrong bus stop. Now I have to wait till 2pm for the bus. A full hour wait. That’s ok. I have been trying to learn some French while I wait. OK… €1.40 for the bus from hotel buss stop to Pont de Severes, which is the location of the train station that will take me into the city.

… That was all quite stressful but it was a great experience. Phew!!

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 4th, 2005 at 3:29 pm and is filed under travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.