Day 2 – Sunday 10 May. 

My followers will know I developed a slight interest in toilets back in 2013 when we went to Malaysia, having never seen a ‘squat toilet’ before, or toilets with hoses.  I have developed a liking for the sit down bidet version, and was a little delighted to be back to that option at the airport!

The flight from Singapore to Paris was through the early hours of the morning and after another glass of bubbles (hiccup) and a meal, we settled down with ear plugs and eye masks.  We both slept or deep relaxed on and off for the next 8 hours, till woken again for a meal and landing half an hour early in Paris at 5:30am.  

We felt fairly well rested despite the long haul, albeit not as well as if in ones own bed.  It took us a while to work out how to get to our airport hotel, which required crossing a busy portion of roads.  We asked for help and got shown an underground ‘tunnel’ which had signage to the next terminal and where the hotels could be reached via the free ‘shuttle’ which is a little train. 

The morning was grey and the hotel – Mercure – not as nice as the photos indicated. However the staff were very nice and we were allowed to check in very early without the $90 extra fee as I am an Accor member.  Celebrating our good fortune, we decided to have breakfast (had worked up an appetite by then) and plan our day.  Breakfast was very good – somewhat surprisingly and we especially enjoyed the Brie and fresh sour dough baguettes. It reminded us of our last holiday in Normandy. The soft cheese just does not taste as good anywhere else than France.

After breakfast we planned to head into the city and see St. Chapelle but it was sold out for several weeks.  I could not believe it as I missed out last time in 2019 too!

So this was our first glitch, although in my defence I did not book it deliberately because I was not sure if we would be up to it or not. We had a quick conversation and booked tickets to see it for our return home leg and decided to have a swim in the heated indoor hotel pool, check our pathway to yet another terminal the next morning when we had an early start, and relax a bit.

The pool was too cold for us, so we abandoned that idea and set off instead in the now rainy day to map our trip for tomorrow. That sorted we got brave and headed on the free shuttle train to T3 (we had arrived at T2, were departing tomorrow at T1) where we had stayed last time and had a very good meal.  When we got there we saw they were not open until 7, which is the norm for the airport hotels so we found out.  Bummer – back to our hotel and eat there as we were just too tired to wait till 7 and then head home or go back and forth between the terminals. Whilst the shuttle is easy and frequent between the terminals, you need to add on about a 6 minute walk for the T2 one where we were staying.  It was around 5pm and we had not had lunch due to our big breakfast so we looked for a snack, but the terminals land side are slim on offerings unlike NZ, and also frightfully expensive for what you get so we ate some left over chocolate and a cookie left over from the plane to tide us over.

Our hotel meal was not too bad, we shared two entrees and a main. French onion soup, foie gras, and lamb shank main.  We also enjoyed 2 complimentary drinks which are a membership perk.  We then wearily chose our clothes, repacked and set the alarm for 4:45am in the morning. Sleep came swiftly.