Aside from the train schedule, there was an issue with the accommodations. There are several websites that mention staying at Sacre Coeur - that it has a sort of cheap hostel and so I had emailed them, but
hadn't heard a reply. Ian really wanted to stay at a church so we decided to just get there and see. So we've had this long day of traveling and we are walking all over Paris with our bags and then we get to the Montmartre area where Sacre Coeur is and ...well to say its the highest point in Paris is an understatement. I was so worn out I didn't even take a picture but here is one from WikiCommons that gives you SOME idea of how many stairs there are...I would have paid for the little tram but the line was huge! So we walked all the way up....and we can't seem to find anything that mentions this monastery place to sleep. So we wander into the church and I head for the little shop run by nuns there...as I'm approaching, I just catch the tail end of a conversation the nun is having with another American woman.."Oh..and you don't have any recommendations for any place else?"...So instead of asking the nun, I ask the women and she was in the exact same spot as us--saw from the web page that there were cheap beds--but NO they are ONLY for religious retreats...now if I was catholic and on my own, maybe I could pull that off but since I'm not, now its late afternoon, we're all exhausted and we have no place to stay in Paris (which can be extremely expensive).
While Ian explores the crypt I find a little 'i' on my Paris map indicating a tourist information center. So I wander off to find that..now I'm expecting some actual help..maybe that's wrong of me but my experiences to date had shown that people, even those who don't have any job role in working with tourists, are generally very happy to help if you ask. I find the place and after a nice greeting, explain I need to find a hotel room for the night - could they please help me find one? "Over there on the rack, there is a map that shows all the hotels in Montmartre"....and that it! That's all I get - a little hand drawn map with numbers on it and then a list of hotel names (without numbers).
I did try to call but my phone (which i got just for use over here) was not acting right, so we picked up the luggage and traipsed off to one that had a lower price then others. Once we find it, the lady there is very odd...its almost as if she is sizing us up.."You want it for 2 nights?""You want 2 rooms?"(Even though she spoke clear English and I had clearly said 1 night, 1 room, three beds). "No, we don't have nay vacancies" but our hotel across town does. So back on the underground, across town, wander around in circles for quite some time as none of us can make heads or tails of the maps compared to the roads...and FINALLY FIND IT! "You have to take 2 rooms, we don't have any rooms that can fit 3 people"
That's when I lost it....the only time this whole trip that I felt completely overwhelmed. I started to cry! But then I pulled myself together, got out my laptop, used that hotels wifi (although I had to pay for the service), found a hotel, booked it, and we were off again...ironically to a hotel just a block from the train station we had arrived in. But even then, it was really hard to find - like many of the older towns, the street names change every block or two so unless you have a huge map, you don't see all the names.
By that time we were all pretty much hating Paris and our opinions didn't change a whole lot. Guess I'm just not a big city person - if I was from New York, I'm sure I'd feel right at home. And I'm sure a lot of the rudeness comes from the fact that there are so many tourist there all the time - it would annoy me too if I had tourists getting in my way, taking up the space on the subway, etc...all the time.
Now compare that to Belfast (where I also had a hotel snafu) - I had email the "Old Rectory" and thought I was all set, but she was waiting for a call from me with my Visa info, and so ended up giving the room away for the first of the two nights. Not knowing this, I arrive late in the day, again exhausted from traveling and also (stupidly) with no address or number - just a vague idea of where it was on the map of the city. So I get on a bus, and I sit and look and look and then we are past the area it should be in and then we are at the end of the route and I'm still siting there. The bus driver (this is the guy with the thick Irish accent that I couldn't understand at all) - is kind enough to let me stay on, calls into his supervisor who has some idea of where the Old Rectory is, and tells me when I need to get off on the way back. When I get there, and find I have not room, the lady running it quickly emails all the local B&B/guesthouses, finds me a room, calls a cab for me, then gets the hotel to cut $10 off the the price! While I'm waiting she lets me sit in the nice little living room and even offers to keep a bag there for me since I will be returning the next day. Now those are nice people! And of course, they have only had tourist for the last 10 years or less, so maybe they just haven't had time to become callused,
Anyway, didn't mean to go on and on and I need to run now but wanted to give a little detail into why Paris was such a bad experience. And of course there were other things - by far the most smokers, beggars everywhere (we didn't have this in London) and graffiti on everything.
We are in our second day in Munich and will write more later - at a hostel with a room to ourselves and FREE wifi in the lobby. So I hope to write more tonight and finally upload at least some of the pictures. We've taken several thousand and so it takes time to weed through them all and just find the best.
BTW we LOVE Munich also - very organized, easy to get around - can even use our EurRail passes on the S-Bahn which goes to most areas of the city. Today we will get a U-bahn pass for the smaller lines but even that is only 9 EUR for a group of 5 adults for the whole day - VERY cheap.
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