Monday Morning - after landing at 6:30 AM
The early hour at the airport still meant a busy airport. After walking through long corridors, some with moving walk-ways, we made it to the huge hub-bub of the area near passport control.
People were every where. No one seemed to be awake. Even the employees, who looked like they'd rather be enjoying a cup of coffee rather than standing at their post.
I spotted a bathroom. I took Julia in, leaving Dan with Sara and all our stuff. That turned out to be a good thing since an airport employee spotted Dan with Sara and gave him a "fast pass" that sent us in a totally different direction than all the other people. Our "fast pass" line had no people - a big improvement over the other line that was so bogged down with people you couldn't even see the line. We just breezed through the "fast" line with our pass. The guy stamped our 4 passports.
Then it was off to baggage.
We followed the signs. Turning corners. Walking down corridors. Taking elevators. Walking more. Sara and Julia were quiet. They were probably a bit sleepy and going with the flow. They were looking around non-stop. Taking it all in. Then we made it to baggage claim. Got our bags. Good. Our bags were easy to spot (they were the 50 pound ones in the huge duffle bags). Then we headed to the train station.
Sara said she was thirsty. So our first few Euros went to some water and Orange Juice. Both girls drank as if they hadn't seen liquid before. Julia took so many sips that she had to gasp for air afterwards. Then she drank more. Not sure why, we gave them stuff on the airplane but they drank as if they had just crossed a desert and hadn't seen water for days.
Our next hurdle was to get to the train station.
The trains station was easy to find - a huge sign said "TRAINS" on the wall. I guess so many people asked over the years where to go for the train station that they just put up that one-word sign. It was effective. But only I saw the sign, soon after we bought the water for Sara/Julia, Dan asked me "do you know where we get the train?" So I pointed to the huge sign.
It wasn't easy to actually get to the train station. We had to take a shuttle train to get to the train station, and it was kind of confusing to know which stop to get off at. But we figured it out. There were also a zillion escalators, which we couldn't use with our stroller, so we were hunting for elevators, which were often slow- and also out of the way - which meant a bit more walking. We didn't mind. It is just part of traveling.
Sara loved the shuttle ride to the train station. Julia did too. They were both looking around in all directions. Julia liked pointing at things - and waving at people who smiled at her.
Once we finished with that shuttle we were in the train station. There were SO many people there. Sara was now asking for food, so we found a little cafe and got a long baguette sandwhich and something else that I don't even remember.
I bought our train tickets months ago. So all we had to do was wait for the train. We found an outdoor platform, which we made our home for about an hour.
When it was 10 minutes to our train, they announced it would be on platform 4. We had to get all our stuff down a long escalator, which was the direction everyone else was going too. It was a challenge. We couldn't just do it in one trip--and hold onto our kids. We had to break it up. Dan took our back packs and the Kelty down first and left them at the base of the escalator. I stayed up top with Sara and Julia. When he came back up he went back down with our 2 duffle bags. Then I went down with Sara. She likes to hold my hand on escalators, so when I started down and we were separated by a few inches she had to race to get my hand. Then we calmly descended into the station down to the train tracks. Almost done, I was down with our luggage and Sara, and Dan was up top of the long escalator with Julia and the huge folded stroller. Next thing I knew Julia was in the arms of a train station employee. Then Dan followed behind with the stroller. Whew! It took 3 adults to get everything down that escalator, but we made it.
Now that we were down by the tracks, we just had to be sure we were standing in the right place. The loading area was long. If we got on the train at the wrong spot, it would take forever to get to our seats if we had to walk through the train with all our stuff. Dan spotted a map of the train, and so since we knew our seat numbers we knew to walk to section A. We were in section G, so we were thankful to do all that walking on the train platform - where walking was pretty easy.
A train pulled into the station. Sara wanted to get on it. It wasn't our train, and it took some convincing that every train wasn't our train! You just can't hop on the first train you see! We had to wait for "our" train.
When our train arrived we got all the stuff on. It was similar to the escalator where I held Julia while Dan hoisted up the car seats, bags, backpacks, Kelty and stroller -- onto the train. He got on and the train left the station. We had to juggle our stuff to our seats.
Our seats were a family seat area, which means we had 4 seats facing each other and a table in the middle. Very nice. We were asleep once we hit our seats, and we slept a lot on the 3 hour train ride. It was the high speed TVG "bullet" train. It was smooth, and fast, but you could still enjoy the scenery - which was astoundingly gorgeous in the morning light. Fields of green - punctuated by skinny trees rising to the sky. Sara slept on Dan's lap, Julia slept in her car seat. Everyone was happy.
That train ride revived us - and our adventure was beginning!
End of this post.
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