We've settled into our apartment and been out walking for a fair bit of today (Wednesday) so I thought I'd share some initial observations / learnings from when we landed at Charles De Gaulle airport.
1) I'm never going fool the locals into thinking my French language skills are great:
While waiting for our bags I went up to the information desk and asked "Où est les toilettes?" She kindly explained in French where they were. As I walked away I thought "Duh" I meant to say "Où sont les toilettes ("where are the toilets" instead of saying "where is the toilets")
2) Not everyone you meet is actually French:
As I walked out of the men's an oriental lady walked past me so I said "les toilettes des femmes sont là-bas" (the female toilets are over there). She looked blankly at me (perhaps she was a little dis-oriental after a long flight (editor's note: "ignore all dad jokes"). She then realised that I was a he and she was a she and did an about-face.
3) Do not expect to be accosted by many pre-paid SIM sellers hoping to do business with you:
After making some further inquiries you will find that you go to a Relay shop (rather like a Newslink shop in Sydney airport) and behind the counter if you are lucky they will be able to sell you a SFR (French equivalent to Telstra only with higher prices and lower service - yes that is possible) pre-paid SIM. You will have no other choice. Maybe my French was not good enough but I got a 30-day voice plan with no data allowance (sigh) for 35 euro. The SIM was a full size one (they did not have the micro SIM that iPhone 4s need - so in the middle of the airport I borrowed the scissors from Jenni's sewing kit and cut the SIM down to size et voilà it worked). I managed to understand enough of the little user guide that came with the SIM that if I did not register with SFR inside 15 days sending them a photocopy of my passport id page that they would stop the SIM working. The SFR website is entirely in French and the free calling numbers provide entirely French auto responses spoken at light speed - lots of fun. In the end I managed to register online and have emailed a photo of my passport from my (now working) iPhone. How, you ask, did I email from my phone when I did not have a data plan? Excellent question, to our eternal gratitude, our apartment has high speed wifi ... As of writing I have not mustered enough courage to call the free help line, navigate the french auto response system and try to talk to an actual human who may deign to speak English and help me get the magical SFR customer id which I need to log onto "My Account" and upgrade myself to include a data plan. Conclusion: get a TravelSIM from any Aust Post Office (or go to www.travelsim.net.au) BEFORE leaving Australia.
4) If you think it's a great idea to buy a 30 day train pass and take the train from the airport into Paris - you are insane.
We landed at Terminal 1, the trains leave from Terminal 2 so you need to get onto the CDGVAL terminal shuttle - not a biggie so far so good. I tried quite hard back in Sydney to research these multi-day passes and concluded that the monthly pass was not well documented but that it is part of the Navigo Découverte ticket system. I also knew that I would need a photo to stick on it - from what I had researched machines existed at the train stations to take such photos (but not at the airport train station I discovered). I had also read that the staff at the train stations were generally (to extremely) unhelpful, but I thought that since I was doing ok at speaking french that they would be more helpful than not (this turned out to be rather naive of me). Managing to contain my frustration with the girl at the ticket counter, I did figure out that the monthly ticket pass starts always on the first day of the month (I naively thought that a monthly pass would go for one month from purchase but not so for this monopoly) and that the weekly pass starts on a Monday. Since I was talking to the girl on a Tuesday that was 10 days from the end of the month I bought two weekly passes. We got our 50 KGs of luggage on to the train. As the train got closer to our destination it became more full than your average sardine tin. Between our second to last stop and our get-off station we managed to persuade our fellow travellers that there was a ton of spare space around so we could move ourselves and our large travel bags to an exit door. Our technique to get to the doors drew its inspiration from the Aussie diggers in world war 1 when they charged over the top of the trenches.
We will take a taxi back to the airport when we leave !
Today resembled an average day. We walked around St Germain, bought stuff and ate stuff, retired stuffed.
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