The Great European Adventure, Day 15: Debarkation + Barcelona to Parisfeatured

Mornings that begin before 7:00 am are pretty awful. Mornings that begin before 7:00 am and you have to debark a cruise ship? They’re downright miserable.

The cruise portion of our trip had slowly ticked by and then passed us in a rush all at once. Sometimes, it felt like we’d been away for the longest time and at others, it felt like no time had passed at all. Leaving the Vision was bittersweet – we felt comfortable with time we’d spent onboard (12 days was the perfect length for this kind of a voyage) and we were all but giddy with anticipation for having the next few days to spend in Paris, but we’d been anticipating this trip for months and it was drawing to a close quicker than I was prepared to deal with.

So that last morning? It was pretty brutal. We were up before 6:00 am. We got dressed in the outfits we’d laid out the night before and gathered all of our belongings before leaving our stateroom.

We opted to have breakfast at the Windjammer, opting to dine al fresco (again) as the sun rose over Barcelona. Royal Caribbean does a pretty good job with debarkation and we didn’t feel crowded, nor did we face any crowding issues like we usually do during breakfast time on debarkation morning.

Our designated waiting area was the Some Enchanted Evening Lounge, but it seemed like it would be rather full given how small it is, so we waited in an empty Schooner Bar.

It was less than ten minutes before our number (10) was called for traditional debarkation. Numbers are only called in the designated waiting areas, so if you’re wandering around the ship, you’ll miss it. We walked through the lobby on our way out, taking it in one last time. This wasn’t our home anymore and it was time to pass it on to the next group of cruisers.

We found no problems getting an elevator down to deck 4 to debark, but once we were in the terminal, we began facing larger delays. Like the Port of Miami, they use carousels in Barcelona instead of lining up the luggage. In my opinion, this is far less efficient for travelers looking to get out (but I assume there’s an efficiency gain in not having to line up thousands of pieces of luggage). It took ten minutes to do a full rotation and while Mom’s and my luggage came out rather quickly, Stephanie’s didn’t, and we had to give it an extra rotation or two before asking a terminal worker for help (her tag had fallen off and her luggage was waiting with a group of untagged bags).

There’s no Customs control in the terminal in Barcelona so once you have your luggage, you’re done and free to leave the terminal. You’ll go through Customs at the airport (twice, actually – once as you check in and once after you land), but you will not face any Customs lines or agents in Barcelona at the terminal. You will, however, face long lines if you need a cab. A long line forms at the taxi stand and we waited nearly a half hour to reach the front. Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait much longer once we were at the front for a cab big enough to fit all of our luggage (the minivans will generally try to hold out for groups of five or larger). We were placed in a cab with a fantastic driver who spoke impeccable English and gave us a little tour as he drove us to the Barcelona Sants train station.

The ride took about 15 minutes door-to-door and ran us €31 (€14.80 of which were fees). We arrived at the train station around 8:15 am and our train to Paris didn’t depart until 1:23 pm, so we settled in.

The Barcelona Sants Station

The Barcelona Sants train station is as large and crowded as you’d expect a train station in the middle of a large city to be. Thankfully for us, there were plenty of dining and shopping options to keep us entertained. Even better, we had first class tickets, so two hours before our departure, we’d be able to enter a private first class lounge.

Let me backtrack for a minute. Why take a train over a plane to get to Paris? We contemplated this for weeks before we made the move to book. A plane ride from Barcelona to Paris is a tick under two hours. A train ride is almost seven hours. The cost is nearly a draw due to the number of budget carriers who carry the route, but we had a lot of luggage. I had no desire to experience travel on a budget European airline. I also didn’t have much of a desire to spend seven hours on a train without wi-fi, but my friends assured me it was a scenic ride that we’d enjoy (and also assured me that if we flew on Air France, the only major airline affiliated with a US alliance carrying a BCN → CDG route, we had a 50/50 shot of ever seeing our luggage again). Stephanie booked us first class so we could have seats on the upper level of the train and that was really that.

So back to Barcelona Sants. We settled into the main seating area and took turns roaming. There was a McDonalds (the fanciest one I’ve ever seen, with ordering stations and a bakery with treats that looked quite decadent). There were stores with last minute souvenirs. There were coffee shops and restaurants and even a modest grocery store inside the main station. We could easily pass three hours in here before we could access the lounge.

There were even high-tech coffee vending machines that made (believe it or not) a more than decent cappuccino.

I grabbed the three of us some Napolitana Xocolatas (Spanish chocolate croissants) and cappuccinos and we settled into our seats in the busy terminal.

Mom went off in search of a restroom at some point and came back telling us of how it cost €0.50 but it was the cleanest restroom she’d ever seen in a train station before, so I had to check it out. You pay at a machine, which vends you a ticket that you scan when you want to enter the restrooms. And they were clean – impeccably so.

Our tickets said we could enter the first class Sala lounge two hours prior to our departure, but we checked in at 11:00 am and they didn’t turn us away. We figured we probably could have checked in even earlier, but we just didn’t know any better.

The lounge was a quiet oasis in the middle of the bustle of the terminal, with complimentary drinks, snacks, wi-fi and restrooms. It never got crowded in the two hours we spent in there and we knew right then and there that the price of a first class ticket was worth it just to have access to this area.

After an hour or so in the lounge (and four in the train station), I was getting stir crazy, so Stephanie and I did a walk through the terminal to do some shopping and outside to get some fresh air.

While there was food for purchase available on the train, Stephanie and I decided it would be fun to have a kind of picnic. We picked up macarons from the McDonalds Café and then headed into the grocery store inside the terminal. Get this – I was standing in a grocery store in the middle of a train station and it was like I was standing in a gourmet food shop. Fresh meats, cheeses and produce. Spreads and pates and freshly baked breads. A wall of wine bottles to choose from. Iberian ham so fresh it’s shaved in front of you from cured legs of meat that still have hoofs on them. We put together a true gourmet picnic from findings we came across in a train station. Go figure. Only in Europe.

By the time we got back, it was time to board, but because we didn’t know much about the whole train thing, we didn’t know how long it takes to board. Had we known, we would have headed out of the lounge much earlier. You have to pass your bags through security. You have to go through some train version of the TSA. You wait in a line for your tickets to be checked before they let you go down to the platform, where you have to find your car. No part of it was quick or easy and it can be incredibly overwhelming if you don’t know what you’re getting into. It took us nearly a half hour and we were partly convinced we’d miss our train and then terrified we were so late that there’d be no room for our luggage. All fears for naught – though the lines were crazy to get onto the train, our car was relatively empty. The train is huge and the lines were indicative of absolutely nothing. We looked a mess by the time we boarded but we made it, our luggage found its place on a rack in our train car and we were on our way to Paris.

Barcelona to Paris

Our train left on the dot and we settled into our assigned seats, two forward and one backwards seated around a table. We crossed our fingers that the fourth seat wasn’t occupied by someone boarding at another stop – that might have been awkward. The seats were comfortable and we found plugs along the wall to keep our electronic devices juiced up. We settled in and watched the Barcelona countryside pass by us.

Once the train hit full speed, we set up our little lunch picnic. It might have been cheesy or cliché, but it was so much fun and a great way to pass some time on a very long ride. The Spanish ham we purchased was amongst the best I’ve ever tasted (…and we got it in a TRAIN station! I can’t get over it!), and those McDonalds macarons were pretty tasty, too.

After we ate, there was nothing left to do but look out the window. When I was little, rides in the car were a frequent weekend activity, so I can find entertainment in looking out a window. I’m sad to think that this is lost on a newer generation, raised to be heavily reliant on technology to keep entertained because the hype of my coworkers was true – the ride from Spain to France is lovely. We rode through towns and cornfields, through mountains and plains. Every once in awhile, we’d pull into a station to pick up others, but the stops would only last a couple of minutes before we’d start moving again.

Halfway through, we got a little restless and took a walk through the next few cars, finding one that was completely empty.

And then it was back to our seats, eyes to the windows.

I can’t lie – the last hour or so was beyond brutal. I think I took a nap to get through it. Stephanie and Mom watched a movie on her iPad. As the farmland faded into graffiti’ed facades, I could tell we were getting close to our final destination.

We pulled into the Paris Gare Lyon station right on time, just before 8:00 pm. We formed a little assembly line to get all of our luggage off the train, and made our way into the station.

Oh, Paris

The Paris Gare Lyon station is smaller than the Barcelona Sants station, which made it very easy to navigate our way out of. One of the biggest benefits of taking the train into Paris is that many of the train stations that feed in from around Europe are located in Paris proper, which meant a shorter (and less expensive) taxi ride than flying into CDG or ORY. We took our first step out into Paris as we walked towards the taxi stand and we just kind of stood there for a moment. Paris. Paris!

We were quickly ushered into a cab and began our drive towards our hotel in Madeleine. Our eyes opened a little wider and our jaws dropped a little lower with each building we passed. Paris is among the most stunning cities I’ve ever visited. Everything is so regal and well-appointed. Beauty exists everywhere, from the street signs to the graffiti, from gilded facades to the topiaries that adorned residential balconies.

And then, as we turned to cross the bridge towards the Rue Royale, we caught our first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, standing magnificently in the background. Spot the Eiffel Tower took our Spot the Whale Tail game to a whole new level, and I don’t think we’ve ever been as excited to see a singular structure as we were to see the Eiffel Tower out the window in that moment.

I’m going to take a tangent from waxing poetic about Parisian structures for a moment to tell you the story of what happened in the cab next. So our driver, super nice gentleman, didn’t speak much English. But language barriers wouldn’t be an issue in Paris, Stephanie and I figured – from the time we were born, Mom would regale us of stories of her academic prowess in her language classes in high school. She was in the French Honors Society, after all. She taught us how to count to ten in French as we learned to count to ten in English. As we learned Spanish, we’d challenge her to talk as fluently in French as we were becoming in Spanish. Mom’s love of the French language, the little accent she’d use when speaking a phrase or two…it was a little joke in our family. So we got to Paris and I’m thinking to myself what a relief it was that we made it through Italy and Greece without knowing a lick of either language because Mom would be able to handle whatever language barriers we faced in France. And then, when the driver asked us in his broken English for the address of our hotel, we turned to Mom and asked her to translate 24 Malesherbes Boulevard for him…and she blanked. Decades of talking up her french knowledge, and when we get her to France, she has some kind of language performance anxiety! I swooped in with my broken, kindergarten level comprehension of the French language and we found our way, but needless to say, Mom’s getting some Rosetta Stone for Hanukkah before we head back to Paris next May.

We pulled up to our hotel, the Hyatt Paris Madeleine, and paid our fare (€32 for the 17 minute ride, including all taxes and fees) before heading into the hotel to check in.

I’m going to do a separate post on the hotel because I have too many words (and pictures) to describe how much we loved this hotel. Stay tuned for that.

After we checked in and settled into our room, we decided to head out and take a walk through the area, and hopefully find a good bistro to grab some dinner at. We didn’t do nearly as much research into Paris as we should have, so we were lost when it came to where to eat and what to expect.

I wanted to start our trip off with a bang… walk down the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe or take a cab to the Eiffel Tower to see it lit up at night. Both ideas were vetoed by my mother and sister, who decided it was too late and we had two full days to explore Paris so we should just take it easy (both regret that we didn’t do either on our first night after the fact, for the record), so we just strolled the streets of Madeleine a bit.

There’s an old quote by Thomas Jefferson… “A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of life.” Walking around the streets of Paris that first night was nothing short of some kind of magical. You can’t describe the sensory experience of being in Paris. The colors, the architecture, the sound of musicians playing along the streets washed out from the traffic riding alongside, the smell of the flowers that seem to be everywhere from the lawns to the parapets.

The sunset in Paris was even later than the sunset had been on the Mediterranean (it wasn’t fully dark until 10:00 pm!) and even after more than two weeks, I still couldn’t get used to these late dusks. The jet lag I was going to face coming home was going to be a real challenge. But a more immediate challenge was finding a restaurant for dinner at 10:00 pm. Thankfully, Paris is a city of the night and we had plenty of dining options available to us. We chose a café close to the hotel, Café Michel Angelo. Italian food in France? We were tired. And hungry. The food was good (and decently priced). The service was atrocious (something we were told to expect in Paris). But for a late night meal after a long day, it fit the bill. Mom and Stephanie went for the Italian fare. I ordered the most French item I could find on the menu, a galette of goat cheese and tomatoes with a side salad and it was light and flavorful and made for a perfect late dinner.

Wine was often times cheaper than bottled water. Seriously. Viva le France.

Spaghetti Napolitaine

Pizza Margherita

Piadina au Chèvre

After dinner, we strolled back to the hotel. I took a long bubble bath in the gorgeous marble tub we had in our bathroom. Mom and Stephanie tried to figure how to stream movies using the AppleTV in the room and we went to bed, so, so eager for our first full day in Paris.