Day Fifty Six: Charles de Gaulle to Montreal

November 15, 2017

We squeaked the bikes out of our teeny room at Premiere Classe and united then with the panniers in one of the many nice open spaces in the common part of the hotel. We happened to choose one under a staircase, noting that this would also have been a perfect and unobtrusive spot for the bikes to have spent the night in the first place. Oh well, our negative review is already on Booking. We noticed that it joined other reviews about sullen and uncooperative staff. Obviously we did not check these reviews in advance, and we wonder how many others actually do. Location, price, and availability seem to figure more for us when looking for a place. Still, there is some satisfaction in posting both positive and negative reviews afterwards.

Lots of potential room for bike storage at the "Premiere Classe"

The hotel was only 7 km form the airport, but that did not make it easy to get there. Not at all. With high speed roads there is often a usable shoulder, but such roads also have on and off ramps and crossing these may be impossible. In our case, we went along alright until the road split. To the right, Terminal 1 and to the left the continuation to Terminal 3 and 2. We needed Terminal 3, which paradoxically lies between 1 and 2. But there was no way we were crossing the Terminal 1 traffic flow and continuing on the high speed route to Terminal 3. So we just allowed ourselves to be swept along to Terminal 1.

As expected, there was a shuttle train to Terminal 3, and we found our way to it after asking directions just two or three times. Obviously, signage was not exactly clear.

The ill fated Concorde, mounted at Charles de Gaulle

How about this! You can get a hotel room by the hour at Ibis. Interestingly there is a two hour minimum. Is this about some kind of "French" performance standards?

We went to the Air Transat counter and things were as expected. We would have to go find some other desk to pay for the bikes and then come back, but we expected that. They gave us the plastic bags for the bikes (there's a plus - a good trick would be to not have any bags) and sent us to one end of the hall to await a man "in red" who would take care of the bikes. Down at that end was a belt to take oversize luggage away. Other times there has been a lot of chemical sniffing and checking of the bikes, involving opening their big plastic bags we just sealed, but in this case the man in red had another ploy. "They are too big to go on the belt", he said. "OK, so now what?", we replied. "French shrug", was his response.

But after some discussion it was agreed that the bagged bikes could be carried the length of the hall and down a corridor to some mystery area deeper in the bowels of the systems. But the man would not lift a bike, so I had to pick up the first one and follow him. He took off at a lope, and I called after him "doucement!". By the time I had hustled across the terminal, through the "authorized personnel only" door, and down the corridor I was quite needing a rest. I thought about saying "Look, I'm almost 70 and we need to do this slower", but then I thought if I am still claiming to be an intrepid cross continent cyclist then maybe I can not complain about speed carrying a standard bulky bagged Dutch bike totally across an air terminal. Anyway, I handed over both bikes to some behind the scenes staff, and said a prayer for the bikes to actually show up in Montreal unharmed.

The red jacket man and our bikes he would not help with.

What next, as we looked at our watches and could see the boarding time approaching? If you have made purchases at a single store on a single day in excess of 175 euros, you can get a refund of the 20% VAT. All you need to do is to get the store to generate a certain form and to take that form to the airport. We did that, for the kids' clothes at DPAM. At the airport, they want to make sure you are really leaving the country. So you need to first validate the form at a tax refund office/validation machine. Where to put such an office and machine? Arrivals of course. Devilish. At least it was not arrivals in another Terminal! So we hotfooted it down to Arrivals and found the (closed) office. But the machine was there - impossible to understand. Fortunately a young man standing nearby knew the drill, and advised us to pass the bar code on our DPAM form under the scanner of the machine, and then to go back to Departures to find the combination currency exchange/bank kiosk.

We actually did that, and found ourselves only behind one person in line at the kiosk. But whatever his business was, it was taking the kiosk worker a very long time. The man told us he had actually waited 1/2 hour for his turn. But we hung in there, and did come away with some refund. It was in Canadian dollars, and we assume it had been calculated at an unfavourable exchange rate for the euros we had paid. Of course by this point such a detail was irrelevant.

As hoped, the airport did have an outlet of the "Paul" bakery, not to mention Brioche Dorée. But tragically we did not have time to do anything but look!

Well they had Brioche Doree, but we could not find time for a purchase

Just got close enough for a photo, but not a bite!

Back to the departure gate. At terminal 3 there are no bridges onto aircraft. Rather you ride a crowded bus to a high set of stairs up to the plane. The step up onto and off the bus and the stairs to the plane gave Dodie's knees some grief. But if I were not somehow writing a bit of a tale of woe, I would not have mentioned it!

Once aboard, we benefitted from one of the better features of a Transat flight the free entertainment system that is presented on a screen in front of each seat. Included in the offerings are some decent movies and also documentaries. In past I have really enjoyed shows about French treats - like macaroons, about master sommaliers, about the history of the Louvre, and various travelogues. This time, shows highlighted the fame of the Burgundy wine region, which we had stumbled into with almost no previous knowledge.

One show described the pruning techniques and soil preparation, near Nuits St Georges. It was called "Masters of Wine". Another, really entertaining, was "Sour Grapes".

"Sour Grapes" is the story of Rudy Kurniawan, a young Indonesian who took the world of wine, particularly Burgundy, tasting and investing by storm by becoming a big buyer and seller, and by eventually being convicted of producing counterfeit bottles. You can find a summary of the story here.

Part of the fun of this story is that it concerned the region we had just cycled through. In fact Laurent Ponsot, the owner of Domaine Ponsot in Morey-St. Denis, played a big role in tracking down the fraud concerning his wines. Morey-St. Denis is 4 km from where we slept in Gevrey-Chambertin Day 40. You can see it on this map from that blog day.

Billionaire Bill Koch bought millions of dollars of fake wines.

The bikes did magically appear, unharmed, in Montreal. We stashed them in storage at the airport and jumped on the very convenient "747" city bus, that takes us all the way in for $10 each.

Our bikes go into storage. They will have one more trial as they try to reach Victoria next Monday.

It was so great to see the kids and Joshua and Sabrina again. We gave the kids some of the things from Paris, and were really gratified by their reactions. Joe, in particular, was tickled with his archer and horse figures from Fontainebleau, and Amelia and Evee enjoyed looking through the toy catalog from Galleries Lafayette.

These dresses from DPAM are really nice - and they fit!

Today's ride: 7 km (4 miles)
Total: 2,103 km (1,306 miles)

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