The day of the Elephant hotel
The coulée verte from Paris to Massy
We left Sceaux, France, on the second leg of our camino. Now lighter by around 20 pounds between us, our packs felt heavy but not overwhelming like they were on our first leg out of Paris.
The trade-off is there can be no more camping, as we haven't any longer got our tent or sleeping pads. In addition, the costs will be higher because we will need to stay in hotels. That will pretty much eliminate going out to "nicer" restaurants, so we also ditched some of our "city" clothes, and will content ourselves to look like hikers. So it goes.
While still heavy to carry, we both found that today's walk was more pleasant, and we both enjoyed the scenery much more than when we were suffering with the heavier loads we carried on the first leg. This seems sustainable, as we are likely to be able to do this daily without too much trouble.
Our day started out well, with fresh baked bread, wonderful espresso, and a couple of oranges to charge our engines for the day. The walk out of Sceaux was very pretty, and we were having a great time, at least until we arrived at our target hotel in Palaiseau (around 10 miles from Paris).
In Paliseau (a charming town by most measures) we found our target hotel was no longer in business. We are finally as of today, able to make phone calls, so we called (well actually Mary called and she gets a special award for French, which over the phone is more difficult than in person).
We found a room at a hotel about another 3 miles down the road, and have now arrived here at the Relais des Chartreaux, something of a golf resort, and clearly off season as it is not very busy (good for us).
Here are some pictures from our voyage today:
Starting out with yet another patisserie
today, we say our first "grand randonee" markings
the path was pretty most all the way
if you look to the side, you see civilization, but the path itself is very quiet and shielded
more trail markers prove we are on the right path. These white/red markers show "the way" which in France is called the GR 655 (Grand Rondenee 655) which will take us to St Jean Pied-a-Port, at the foot of the Pyrenees where we cross into Spain, some 500 miles south of our current progress.
more way-markers, and some random guy chatting on his cell phone
way marker on a street sign pole
it's pretty like this the whole way
just some random flowers growing on the side of the pathway
charming old homes, all along the way
flowers growing out of a rock wall
the town of Palaiseau proved to have "no room at the inn", well actually, they had no Inn.
This was somebody's country home. Don't know who, but they have a heck of a front yard.
At this point, the path was along a road. Not as charming, but still a nice walk.
Some cute girl, I met on the way.
We finally arrived at our hotel for the night, the Relais des Chartreaux
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