Paris 2011 - on the way to Versailles

The first morning we took off to go to Versailles. We went to the train station and got our tickets from the ticket booth so we were sure we got the right fare and route figured out.

We went down to the platform and caught the RER C that was just pulling into the station. "No wait, Yay, and hmm there's not a lot of people going to Versailles today," we thought. After getting on the upper deck of the train John said, "Wow. The train was 3 minutes early."


In the upper deck of the train.

That was a smooth and happy train ride. As we went farther and farther away from the city we enjoyed the beautiful suburban cottages and beautiful landscapes. The houses we saw were like the ones in paintings. Breathtaking.

One fun(ny) thing that happened during this train ride was that at one point John and I seemed to be the only passengers in that cart of the train, and as the train was approaching a forest area it reduced speed and slowed down quite a bit. The train almost came to a compete stop. The first thought that came to my mind was, "Oh. This reminds me of that horror movie I watched, where passengers were taken into the middle of nowhere and the train stopped..."

Anywho. We were ok. After a few minutes of idling the train started again and everything was back to "normal."

Another few minutes left and we passed a couple more cute and lovely suburban stations. John thought it was about time that we reached our destination station, so he went to check the map at the end of the cart.

WE WERE ON THE WRONG TRAIN.

We were on RER C all right, but the RER C route split after Champ de Mars... and the RER C train we were on was the one that would end up in Pontoise.

We figured we would get off the next station and went backward to Champ de Mars and catch the correct RER C. We quickly went to the opposite side of the platform to try to catch the next train to Champ de Mars.

The station we got off was St. Quen L'aumone Liesse. We were almost at the end of that line!

Well. We were lost, but at least we enjoyed the ride and enjoyed the quaint and beautiful St. Quen L'aumone Liesse.



St. Quen L'Aumone Liesse.

When the train came we got on and went backward towards Champ de Mar.


Champ de Mars station.

At Champ de Mars station was when we learned to read the monitors at the platform. Each line has trains with different names, and each name signified a train that stops at different stations, and goes to a different route... even if they were all, in a bigger picture, the same line. In our case, "RER C." This "learned skill" was proven very useful for the remaining of our trip!

We took the correct RER C train and were on our way to Versailles. For real.


The view on this train was really different.


And yes there were more people on this train, and most of them were going to see the Chateau de Versailles.