Paris to Bordeaux by train(s)

So, over the past three or four times I've flown into Paris, since 2019, I've developed a sort of routine.

I (1) collect my bags, get through customs and immigration (which was a little wonky this time because CDG airport is putting in new passport automation and doesn't have the queue signage figured out yet) and I go to the train station.

At the train station, I (2) find a shopette / bodega / convenience store and purchase an Orangina, which I pound immediately to help stave off the air travel induced dehydration and give me that jolt of "oh yeah, you're back in France!"

  

Hell yeah. Que la fête commence!

Then I (3) start to doubt that I have ever learned ANY French, because generally at this point I've been traveling for 12+ hours and have only had a fitful nap in the last day and a half, and so my brain interprets the mental fog of jetlag as a complete lack of language function, and there are lots of people around me speaking variations of French in this train station and I am understanding exactly 0% of it and my brain is going "huh, that's funny we thought we knew some of those words but nope, you get nothing.  We're in a foreign land are you're doomed to ignorance."

This always makes purchasing a ticket into Paris slow and painful and kind of funny, because the vending machines that sell tickets cannot, for any amount of touchscreen navigation, love, money, or pleading, be induced to sell you a digital one-way ticket which is added to your Navigo card, even if you HAVE a permanent one like I do, (which I highly recommend because the weekly pass you can load onto those things is by far the best deal in Transit-passes anywhere, of all time).

So if you just want one ticket, you have to buy a 2 Euro Navigo basic tappable card just for this one stupid purpose, which is incredibly wasteful and silly and doesn't SEEM like it would be a limitation.

So I (4) always kindof mash buttons in a baffled manner for a while, eventually getting partial assistance from the SNCF employees and remembering that I simply cannot do the thing I want to do, before 

(5) boarding an RER B into Paris, which is absolutely the way to get to Paris and if you get in a Taxi (unless you have like 6 bags and a pet in tow) you are insane.

So once I get through the traditional gauntlet de la gare, it's off to Paris.

Then it's the RER B to the M4 Metro line, then a long wander through the underground passageways to Montparnasse, where I can board the Grandes Lignes to get out of the city and into the countryside.

(I'm headed to Bordeaux, a city I've never visited, for the first couple of days of my trip.)

Since I've been forced to give myself a bit of padding in case anything went horribly wrong, and nothing did, as per usual, I reach the station with almost 2 hours to spare, which gives me time to pop out of the station and across the street, to Café Jeannette which turns out to be an ideally French corner café, where I am sold key armament in the war against jetlag -- an Iced Coffee and a snack.

 

The proof of life photo that I snapped to let folks know I'd reached France successfully.

A perfectly reasonable iced coffee and a delicious fish and carrot tartinette, which is translated as "a sausage for spreading" I guess, but y'all Americans interpreting this should probably think of as a sort of firm pudding / moist loaf. . . Thing.

Think meatloaf, but with fish.  A fishloaf, if you will.

. . . Anyway, my fishloaf was freaking great, after a whole day of perfectly reasonable* airplane food.

So I faffed about on my phone and composed that last entry about Heathrow in the delightful spring weather and basked in the Frenchness of just being diligently ignored by the staff while I took an hour to finish a treat that I could have polished off in 90 seconds, less with the right motivation.

With 30 minutes to go, I popped back into the station's Paul (a pastry shop chain that is e.v.e.r.y.w.h.e.r.e.) and got an espresso to act as reinforcement for  the iced coffee, and an apple pastry (not pictured, perfectly servicable) and then wandered around in the station until I found my line and boarded my TGV for Bordeaux.  Since France is a Real Country With Actual Transit, I'll be in Bordeaux in a couple of hours because I'm currently watching the gorgeous countryside flit by at roughly 300km/hr.

*British Airways isn't trying to kill anyone with their cuisine these days but they're not winning any Goodyear** stars either, let alone Michelin ones

**I don't know any English tire brands, sorry y'all.