and the driver took off at 6.24 and brought us into La Puy en Verlay where we had only a few minutes to catch the train back down the upper Loire to St Etienne.
There we waited an hour and a bit for our TGV to leave for Paris. We needed to get from Paris Lyon to Paris Nord and had 3 hours to spare so dragged our luggage for 2 hours along the boulevards.
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| PLACE DE LA BASTILLE |
Still had plenty of time to wait at the station (nowhere to sit) before they would announce which platform our Thalys to Cologne would leave from. This proved to be a very good train in first class with regular free food and drinks.
Of course it was also one of the dearest supplements we had to pay on top of our pass. Then at Cologne another 3 hour wait till 10pm when our City Night Line to Copenhagen arrived from Amsterdam. When booking our berths for this train we asked for a 4 berth couchette. When we got on the train it was packed (as the night trains usually are) and we found our compartment had 6 couchettes. One of the middle bunks was broken so they had to move one person elsewhere. We had the two bottom bunks and Nancy and Randy from Virginia had the top ones. A Dutch lady arrived to take the other middle bunk. It was crowded and the toilets were not up to scratch but once we were all in bed we all slept well, and a lot better than sitting up all night. The moral is: book at least 2 months ahead to get a 2 berth sleeper and pay the extra. The train is quite old and arrived at Copenhagen one and a half hours late, missing connections for some. We were fine since we did not need to check in till 2pm at the Neptune Clarion Hotel.
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