Paris

Left Santiago this morning, glad to be starting the homeward trek. All went without a hitch till the train from Cdg stopped at Gard du Nord, and all passengers were left to fend for themselves. Looked like something had gone seriously wrong with the Paris train system, as there were people everywhere. A nice man emptying the rubbish bins sent me in the right direction and a packed train eventually appeared, which i managed to squeeze onto, which took me one stop in the right direction before we had to get off. Found another nice man, a cleaner, who led me through a maze of platforms and pointed me to my third train which, despite skipping a station without any announcement i was aware of, brought me to the station I wanted. Took nearly three hours to get from CDG to here, which wasn't quite what I had in mind for the relaxing stopover.
Paris is quite confronting after a month or so of mostly rural spain . It is incredibly expensive - i spent as much on dinner tonight as i have on 5 dinners in Spain. It was a nice dinner, but not 5 times as nice. There seem to be lots of desperate looking homeless people, all the more distressing because of the contrast with the elegant, well heeled crowds of people who seem to effortlessly ignore them. All in all a bit noisy and busy for me at the moment. I wont be sorry to get On the plane tomorrow.