Heading To Montenegro, but first - Paris!

Regular readers may remember our post about training for our swimming trip to Montenegro. We are on our way to Montenegro now, followed by a couple of days in Dubrovnik, Croatia. We, obviously, will have something to say about this adventure after it is over. But, first, on our way, we stopped over in Paris because, of course we did . . . in part because of the cheaper flight options and well, because Paris is Paris.

The first part of this story is what it took to get to Paris. We usually can jump on the first local train from San Sebastian for the 35 minute ride to Hendaye (in France) and get on a 7:20 am TGV train to Paris. But, as we learned about a week ago, that would not be possible this time because (1) the Hendaye station is closed due to the G7 conference in Biarritz (18 miles away) and, perhaps related, (2) the earliest train wasn't leaving San Sebastian until 7:00 am!

So, the first thing we did was try to find a hotel in Hendaye, which turned out to be impossible probably because everyone else had the same idea. However, we did find a room in Irun, Spain -- just across the border -- for the night before we left. Of course, because of all that is going on, our crappy hotel room cost almost 100 Euros. Next, we took a recon mission to Irun to see what walking across the border would be like. While it is only about a 10 minute walk from Irun to Hendaye, we probably saw 20-25 heavily-armed police officers. The good news was, it did not appear that it would be a problem to walk into France.

On Friday night we took the train to Irun and checked into our hotel. After coffee and dessert in the hotel bar we walked over and saw that the bridge appeared to be relatively quiet, with police diverting car traffic, but not bothering walkers/bikers. After a less-than-great night's sleep, we walked to the train station in Hendaye at around 6:30 a.m., and we did not see a single policeman on the bridge (although traffic was still being diverted). So, we had no problem making our train.

We wish the leaders of the G7 countries just had a teleconference.

Now, we are once again in Paris. Last night we went to another show at the Atelier des Lumeries, which displays art in a unique and immersive way. We loved the show we saw in May featuring Van Gogh, and this time we saw one focused on Gustav Klimt. Although we did not think it was as dynamic as the previous one, the visuals were still impressive:

And, of course, there were visuals of the famous Woman In Gold painting:

Sunday morning (today), we headed out to the Cluny Museum, which is dedicated to art and history of the Middle Ages including the famous Lady and The Unicorn tapestries, which were commissioned around 1500 by a wealthy French family. But, the museum is also at the site of ancient Roman baths that date from the 2nd Century. When we arrived, we learned that the museum is currently undergoing a significant renovation, so while we were able to see the tapestries and a small amount of the permanent collection, we did missed out on a lot (to be fair, our entry was free). But, for me, the most interesting part was the frigidarium (cold room) of the Roman thermal baths. This amazingly-preserved room is giant, probably more than 2000 square feet with 40-foot-high ceilings. This picture only gives a small sense of the scale:

While we had seen the ruins of Roman baths in other places, including Pompeii, the scale of these baths was truly spectacular.

All-in-all it has been a good, if brief, stay in Paris. Tomorrow, we take an early flight to Dubrovnik (4:30 am cab (!)), and then a car transfer to Tivat. Much more about our swimming adventures to come.

Hasta pronto,

Jeff and Shana