Day 4- Travel Day to Bretagne

Early riser Charlie was the alarm for the family and woke us all up at 6:20.  We were out the door by 6:45 to make our 7:20 train from Zurich to Paris.  We are getting pretty good at lugging our luggage from place to place!

It was a 4 hour train ride to Paris without any real hiccups- just annoyed with no Wifi on the train and the charging stations at the seat didn’t work.  So we went old school and played with stickers, played games, and read books.

Charlie decided to start his nap about 45 minutes before arriving in Paris and stayed asleep in his stroller for 3 hours.  This might not seem that much of a feat, but during these three hours the rest of us were navigating our way through large train stations onto a Paris city bus (crowded and hot) to another train station 45 minutes away.  We only had an hour and 15 minutes, so we were feeling a bit crunched for time.  In the end we didn’t need to rush as our train had been cancelled!  Ugh.  Luckily there were friendly information people that guided us to the office where another friendly person explained that we didn’t have seats but we were free to take the next train, which was 2 hours later.  We got some yummy Parisian sandwiches and waited out the 2 hours on the floor of the train station – which Charlie slept through.  He woke up just as we were boarding the 2nd train.  This train was packed with people in our same situation, so there was no where to sit.  A very nice lady saw me holding Charlie in the hallway to the bathroom and came over to give up her seat for us.  Then a super nice guy named David gave up his seat for Lily as he had his dog with him who like to stretch in the hallway anyway.  Matt ended up chatting with David for almost the entire 3 hour journey in the hallway, along with Melanie who was content sitting in the hallway with the dog and playing on her ipad.  Charlie was a little squirrely, but honestly was AMAZING for a 2 yr old cramped with his mom in a tiny seat for 3 hours.  What seems at first like a horrible situation, turns as usual into a great experience.

We made it to Laurent at 18:00, Nate, Hannah, Alan, and Alex met us at the train station with a car to transport our bags to the AirBnB.  We got the keys right  at 18:30 and then headed back to the Caucutt’s new apartment and then to dinner.  We ate a delicious dinner with scrumptious french bread, while the kids and Matt played at a nearby park before the food arrived – Charles needed to run off some energy.

Another day with some bumps in the road, but the family took them in stride and were recipients of the kindness of strangers.