Getting In Touch With Parisians... Quite Literally

So today I taught my one and only class nice and early and then, due to the teacher's strike, headed out to sightsee with Katie some more. We started at Versailles but got there a bit before it opened and had to wait in line with the most ridiculous tourists I've ever encountered. When the doors were finally opened they pushed and shoved and yelled like they were all trying to get to their dying children. In retrospect it was good practice, but I'll get to that later. We explored Versailles for a while and even walked through some of the gardens in the rain.

After a leisurely lunch at a pizza place in town we found a train going into Paris so we could finally go up the Eiffel Tower. Despite the rain, it's France and how can you come and not go up!? Unfortunately the strike is still in full swing so we had quite a wait for a metro, but when it arrived it was blessedly almost empty. We arrived at the Eiffel Tower before the lights came on and got a few good photos, went up to the first level to enjoy the city as the lights came on and then realized that the next train back to Chartres was in an hour.

Normally that's not an issue because there's a train every 30-45 minutes, but with the strike it was either 6:30pm or 8:00pm, which would get us back to Chartres rather late. So we took off at a good clip back towards the metro station. As we turned the corner we saw a train in the metro station... and watched, horrified, as it pulled away. So we ran up just in time to hear the PA voice say that only 1 in every 10 trains was currently running on this line. It was now about 5:45 and the train was to pull out of the station at 6:30. We waited until a metro pulled in at 6:10 and our mouths dropped when we saw how full it was. I grabbed Katie's arm and literally pulled her into the metro, then put my head down and headed as far in as I could get. People behind us didn't make it on the train at all. Without anything to hold onto I was worried about what direction I'd head when the train started moving... but there were SO many people and it was SO packed that it didn't matter. There was so little room anywhere on the metro that it was a physical impossibility to move. At the next station even more people tried to get on and I could feel my internal organs being slowly rearranged. Oh, did I mention I had a pack of 6 eggs in my backpack for dinner?! We finally got to our stop and I almost had to throw some punches to get off the car. Looking down at my watch I realized it was 6:25... we could still make this train!
At this point I'd like to remind readers that between Saturday, Sunday and Monday we had already walked about 15 miles each and at least 500 stairs... But regardless of the fact that our muscles were already fatigued we decided to sprint for the train. Up one escalator. Up another... crap it's out of order. Gosh, I really wanted to sprint up two flights of stairs. At the top Katie gasps out "I... can't... do... this..." and I said "You... have... to...". It was a rather Amazing Race moment. We power-walked/ran to the train, threw ourselves inside the closing door and collapsed in laughter as the train pulled away.
Back in Chartres we're drinking lots of water, stretching, rubbing on Icy Hot, and anticipating how the curse will continue tomorrow. Stay tuned.