Train to Thonon-les-Bains

I have a train to catch, but I don’t rush. After checking out from the hotel, I walk to Le Notre-Dame, a traditional French café facing Notre-Dame diagonally across the river, and I sit at one of its little outdoor tables. I know that I will find an inexpensive (nine euros) traditional French petit déjeuner: bread, butter, jam, orange juice, coffee. I don’t normally like butter, but in France, the butter tastes good, so I allow myself a little. I order and the bells of Notre-Dame ring boldly and the steady ascent of morning sun feels like a warm wrap climbing protectively up my shoulders and back. 

If I was smart, I would press to the train station to activate my Eurail Pass and get a reservation for the train to Thonon-les-Bains. Sometimes, though, in order to enjoy the moment rather than fret about the future, it is necessary to let it go. I will get there and figure it out. I’m going to enjoy now without the cloud of then. 

Everything is vivid in the bright sun and the trees and buildings reflect in the river. Slowly, I eat the bread, drink the juice, sip the coffee. A coffee in Paris is not much liquid, but what is there has a rich flavor and is much more rewarding. Quality over quantity.

Gare de Lyon was the first train station I ever needed to find. It was the first day in my life of traveling alone and I held a paper map in my twenty-year-old fingers. I knew where I was and roughly where Gare de Lyon was, too. I wasn’t lost. Just twisting the paper around to make sure I was headed down the right street. I’d spent the past few days at the Young and Happy Youth Hostel on rue Mouffetard. Venturing out on my own now that my friend from Alaska had gone off to Spain, I decided my first solo train trip would be to Antibes, right next door to Nice along the French Riviera, a place I’d been before when I was seventeen and on an exchange living with a family for three and a half weeks. In the mornings, French articles were drilled into us in camp-like barracks, afternoons were spent on the beach. Three years later, I wanted to go back and see it again.

I’m sure I could have found my way across the river to Gare de Lyon. It wasn’t far. However, a man thought I looked perplexed and wanted to help. Eager to practice my fledgling French, I ended up spending the rest of the day walking all over Paris with Michel, who said he was a doctor who’d just returned from working with Mother Theresa in India and was on his way back to his family farm in, wait for it, Nice. What a coincidence! That’s where I was going! In the end, he took a little money from me, not much, and it was the price of a chance to see what it was like to be a local in Paris and visit Sacré Coeur for the first time.

Paris has seven main train stations: Gare du Nord, Gare de l’Est, Gare de Lyon, Gare d’Austerlitz, Gare de Bercy, Gare Montparnesse, and Gare Saint-Lazare. There is a logic to them. Gare du Nord takes you points north, now including the Eurostar to London. Gare de l’Est takes you to places to the east, particularly Strasbourg and the Alsace and Burgundy and further to Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, and even Moscow. Gare Saint-Lazare, featured in a series of paintings of misty train mystery by Claude Monet, takes you to Normandy. Gare Montparnesse, which is close to the dark blocky Montparnesse building, Paris’ self-professed eyesore in the western part of Paris, takes you to locations in the southwest, such as Bordeaux and on to Spain. Gare d’Austerlitz, near a bridge of the same name, also takes you points southwest. Gare de Bercy specializes in transporting vehicles such as automobiles, scooters, and motorcycles, primarily with overnight trains to Italy, and also acts as a relief station for the busy Gare de Lyon right next door. And Gare de Lyon heads you toward the city of Lyon, as the name implies, and points southeast from there. 

I walk along the river. There’s a statue of Sainte Geneviève, one of the patron saints of Paris, on Pont de la Tournelle, the bridge that crosses to Île Saint-Louis. There is a child in her arms meant to represent any child in need of the saint’s protective arms just as she protected Paris in the fifth century. 

I cross La Seine at Pont d’Austerlitz, enjoying the way Notre-Dame de Paris looks like an impressive vessel of the seas coming down the river with the statue of Sainte Geneviève as its figurehead. The unrelenting ladies of Paris. 

Once across the bridge, I follow the signs to Gare de Lyon.

Immediately, I recognize the distinguished clock tower. It was an otherworldly thing to a young traveler from Alaska so many years ago. 

One of my favorite train stations, I am eager to step inside. It was built for the World Exposition of 1900. The hall of trains is grand with the steamy mysteriousness that I love about train stations, like anyone could suddenly emerge from that steam with a trench coat and a story.

The soft glow of the little huts giving just the thought of coffee and chocolate and pastries will warm your hands and stomach on cold early mornings or late nights. Trains slide under its grand arches like horses coming into the stalls of their barns. Large round clocks weave in and out of the steam.

Inside, I go to the SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer, literally the national society for the iron paths) and stand in line to get my Eurail Pass activated and pay any necessary ticket reservations.

Although it is a strange habit of Americans to come to the train station on the day of travel to buy tickets, it goes well. The ticket people are nice and allow me to speak and listen in French. I pay ten euros for a first class reservation for a train departing for Annecy at 12:45 pm. At Annecy, I will take a bus for Thonon-les-Bains, arriving at 6:20 pm. Two women tag team assisting me and make it clear that I am very fortunate to get a ticket like this on the same day that I’m traveling. I thank them profusely.

Grateful to have a little time before the train arrives, I savor the grand hall of trains by sitting in a café where I can see the board of train departures and watch for Lyon-Part-Dieu to show its number so that I know its track. When it gets close to boarding time, I pay for the coffee and join the others huddled looking up before the ever-changing digital board of places, times and tracks. Most of them indicate “à l’heure,” or “on time,” but now the train to Lyon-Part-Dieu says “en retard,” which means it will be late. That this is not good news for anyone can be felt and there is a unison sagging of shoulders. 

Given the short train to bus change in Annecy, I won’t be able to proceed as planned. 

I have a wonderful rail application on my cell phone that gives me a way to look up possible train connections between places and even see the individual stops along the way. It’s the Eurail Trip Planner Application. After you download it, you choose either Interrail (if you’re living in the European Union) or Eurail for everyone else. Then, you look up connections.

I enter the information for the train I’m taking from Paris to Annecy and see where it stops along the way. Chambéry. I’ve been there before. Perhaps there is a local train leaving Chambéry for Thonon-les-Bains. And there is one with a train change at Culoz! It leaves Chambéry late enough that this delay leaving Paris won’t be a problem. And no reservation is necessary, so the Eurail Pass is all I’ll need to sit anywhere available. Whew!

Sitting anywhere available is a great thing because when the voie (track) number finally does pop up on the digital board above our heads and the gaggle of people and luggage migrates toward the track, I end up walking the entire length of the train to find the voiture (car) number that corresponds with my ticket. And once I get on the right car of the train, I discover there isn’t a corresponding seat with the number on my ticket because they had to change the train. I, and a handful of others, have nowhere to sit. 

I stand in the entryway of the bathrooms and the exit doors for the first train travel of the trip.

Thankfully, there is a little flip-up emergency seat, presumably at the ready for train staff as needed, and I am able to hunch there to watch the world pass by through a small, rounded door portal that says issue de secours (emergency exit) at the bottom. 

The train staff are beside themselves when they take my ticket. With most of the displaced, they are able to provide future travel as reimbursement. With a foreign traveler, there is nothing they can do. They clearly feel terrible. “Ça va. Pas de problème,” I attempt to reassure.

I watch the flat farmlands become hills and then mountains as the train follows one of France’s iron paths southeast.

The first stop after leaving Gare de Lyon is about 400 kilometres later: Mâcon-Loché. A man steps out, desperate for a few puffs of his vapor pipe after an hour and a half in the non-smoking train. He looks around, not wanting his addiction to be seen. 

The train passes through Lyon and, in an hour, I get off at Chambéry. I check the train departures on the monitor and the schedule I looked up was faithful. The time is the same. I have an hour to walk around Chambéry before I need to be back in the station. 

This is my second time in Chambéry unexpectedly, and once again, I’m drawn to the bright town ringed with stony striped mountains. For many years, it was the capital of the Duchy of Savoie until Turin took over.

Past the town plaza, I see the Château des Ducs de Savoie at the top of a hill. There is a rough looking young man slouched barely sitting against the joined buildings scribbing with paper and ink like a tortured artist of old. Is he writing or drawing? I can’t tell.

Above him, spread over the entrance to the narrow, cobbled street, is a sign and an old lamp: “Rue Basse du Château, une rue du XIVème, avec ses boutiques.” In other words, it’s the street at the bottom of the castle, a street from the 14^th century, with shops. 

The pink Hôtel de Ville has a carousel in front, something I see again and again in the center of French towns because children are a natural part of life in France.

I return to the train station determined to visit again.

I board the train for Culoz and find a comfortable seat for the sunset ride through the mountains and lakes of the Savoie. The train follows Lac du Bourget, which was named for a castle of the Savoy counts. The sharp pointed La Dent du Chat (the tooth of the cat) peers over a lonely boat on the dusky lake. 

There are only a handful of us who arrive at the small SNCF station in Culoz. The train for Thonon-les-Bains arrives in a half hour, so I walk around the rocky, quiet town. There is a beautiful three-story stone restaurant right up against one of the mountains with an inviting entrance on the first floor. With more time, it would be a great place for dinner. 

It becomes dark on the nearly empty train from Culoz to Thonon-les-Bains. I arrive at the station hoping it won’t be too difficult to find the Ibis hotel where I made a reservation weeks ago. Simple, plain, white, often small and undecorated, typically quite clean, Ibis is a chain of hotels throughout Europe. It is the economy choice with amenities you can count on. 

I step off the train, out of the station, and onto a bit of a cul-de-sac. I’m unable to access the map on my phone, but I know it’s a ten minute walk from the station to the hotel. I’m not sure which direction.

Trusting I’ll figure it out, I walk the way that makes the most sense. Fortunately, there is a woman heading for her car. I ask if I’m going in the right direction for the Ibis and she asked, Which one? That’s right. There are two. I’m not sure the best way to designate the one I’m staying in, so I say that it is the closest one to the train station. She invites me to get into her car because it’s easier to take me there than try to explain. The woman says she’s on her way to dinner with her daughter. I apologize for the interruption and she says it’s no trouble, it’s the way she’s going anyway. She’s very friendly and trusting and immediately I like Thonon-les-Bains. 

At the Ibis, I check in and the front desk person is very kind. She makes food I select from a snack menu and serves a glass of wine. She’s from Brittany and prefers to speak in English. At first, I’m concerned that the reason she’s speaking English is because my French is terrible, but eventually I figure out that she just wants to practice. 

Tomorrow, I’ll walk to the castle where my ancestors lived centuries ago. 

Next France for Two Months: Château de Ripaille