The alarm was set for 6:00 am, but I was awake before that. We got up, packed our panniers and made ready to ride to the train. At about 6:45 am the skies opened up with torrential rains. We slipped into our rain gear.
We had told Adri and Skijnie we were planning to leave at 7:00 am. This would allow us to get to the train station by 7:30 am and give me an hour to get the bike disassembled and boxed, leaving 20 minutes to lug it and all our gear up to the station, find the correct platform and load onto our 8:58 train. We were ready to go at 7:00 am, but did not hear either of our hosts moving about, so we wrote a note of thanks, left it on the table in the kitchen, and pushed our bikes up from the back door onto the street. I stopped to take a picture of their house, and saw Adri upstairs getting dressed. He poked his head out the window and said he was coming down.
We had a brief goodbye at the front door, thanking them again for their wonderful kindness and friendship. Then, we were on our bikes and headed through the rain for the train station. We got there about 7:25 am and rode the sloping escalator down to the bike shop.
A new man was manning the shop, William. He said Martin had left him a note about the cardboard to make a box from and he drug out a couple sheets for us to use. He was talkative and helpful. He offered me the repair shop space to work in and any of the tools in the adjacent tool chests I might need. Of course, I had everything I needed as I had done this a few times before, but I appreciated his generosity.
It took nearly the entire hour to get the bike apart and the box taped around it. The pedals were particularly hard to free from the cranks, as I had tightened them firmly when I assembled them in Lucerne. Half the threads had been stripped out of them because I did not tighten them in Paris and they had worked loose without my notice. When I rode in the dark to the Bastille Day fireworks at the Eiffel Tower, I felt something was not right with the pedals, but without my tools and in the dark, I could not see the problem. Once the fireworks were over and I got to a streetlight, I could see the peddles were half unscrewed from the crank arms and they were crooked with half of the threads badly stripped. I had gingerly rode back to our B&B and my tools before I could tighten them and stop the damage. When I reassembled the bike in Switzerland, I had snugged the peddles firmly into the remaining threads on the crank, and they held all the way to Rotterdam, but now they were a bugger to get free, but they did loosen.
I cut a hole in the cardboard box I had constructed where the horizontal bar on my bike was. This gave me a handle to carry my bike with. I put everything I could in my backpack, lashed two of the panniers to the outside of it, buttoned the other two panniers together to form one unit and with pack on back, two panniers in one hand and my bike in my other hand, headed for the train platforms. We stopped to grab a muffin and soda to go for breakfast, then planted ourselves on the platform with 20 minutes to spare and waited for our train. As is often the case, our platform number was changed at the last minute, but thankfully it was just to the other side and did not require me to load up and lug everything up and down escalators.
Getting on board was like a Marx Brothers movie. My bike would not fit in the baggage storage area. The conductor instructed me to place it in the dining car behind a counter. I deposited all the panniers in the luggage rack, but still had my backpack on, with my helmet dangling from the back. The train was already in motion, swaying back and forth as we left the station and gained speed. As I muscled the bike box through the narrow aisle of the seating area of the dining car, I too rocked back and forth, as did my helmet on it long chin strap. Sally was behind the glass entrance door of the dining car, watching in horror at it slapped each and every passenger in the face as they tried to sip their hot coffee. I was unaware of the unfolding catastrophe. I placed the bike box where instructed and turned around to see Sally running to me in the swaying train with a horrified expression and hear her explanation of what had just occurred. I secured my wayward helmet before returning back through the aisle of disgruntled and staring passengers. It did not end there.
Our seats were at the far end of the next car. The swaying car made it hard to negotiate the aisle, even without the bike box. When I got to my seat, I lifted my pack to place it in the overhead cargo space. As I shoved it into place, one of the 20 oz coke bottles I had filled with water this morning slipped out of the outside pocket and was targeting the head of the passenger below. Sally saw the unfolding catastrophe and quickly stuck her arm out to deflect the dropping bottle. She was successful, the bottle striking her arm and then his tray table with a resounding thud, but still startling everyone nearby, including me. We apologized profusely and grabbed the errant bottle. I was very glad to sit down and not move again, having disrupted two cars full of people in the first five minutes of our two and a half hour ride.
We contended ourselves with reading and blogging on the ride to Paris. Every once in a while I would use the GPS on my iPhone to check our speed as we rocketed along. Check the screen shot below.
I waited until all my fellow passengers disembarked in Paris before I rose from my seat. We retrieved my bike and panniers, assembled my load, and began the long walk to our train connection to Versailles. It took two train transfers, but soon we were standing at the train station in Versailles.
Our B&B was one block from the palace entrance, about a half a mile away from the train station. Loaded with our gear, we walked the distance. When we arrived we double checked the address. We were standing outside stately looking buildings, far to nice to house an Air B&B site. I texted the host, Stephanie. She quickly replied she would be right down. To my amazement, she and her husband did appear. This was the right place! After securing my bike in locked storage, they lead us up three floors to a sumptuous three bedroom apartment with oak parquet floors, huge south facing windows with sunlight streaming in and attractive furnishings. Stephan explained in his limited English that we shared the house with them for our stay, that we were not to be bashful about using the kitchen, living room, etc. and showed us our large bedroom and private bath. What a palace next to the palace!!
They offered us something to drink, and we sat on the couch and talked for half an hour and got to know each other a bit. We then retired to our room for a nap. We rose about 6:00 pm, wandered into Versailles' restaurant district for dinner, settled for some tortellini at a street side cafe, stopped by the grocery store for some supplies and headed back to our palace for the evening.
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