Today was supposed to be a simple train ride to Paris, but ....
We made it to the train station in Berlin in time, and adjourned for a coffee before joining the train. The ride itself down to Frankfurt wasn’t bad, with some nice scenery going past our window. Unfortunately, there was an accident on the track and we found out, through Fran checking online, that we were running about 50 minutes late and we only originally had 14 minutes to catch our connection. As such, our connection train had already left Frankfurt almost an hour before we arrived. There had been an announcement in French about it, but nothing mentioned to us. We talked to one of the conductors as they were walking past and they explained that we should stay on the train past Frankfurt until we get to a station called Karlruhe where we could catch a train to Paris, with no additional costs attached. No real problem.
We pulled into the station and I said to Fran that she should leave her suitcase with me and just get to sort out our ongoing tickets. She did this and as such we ended in front of about 25 other people, managed to get 1st Class tickets for our connection and made it onto the train with plenty of time. We were also located immediately next to the dining car so went down for a late lunch. We spent the next hour simply chatting, eating and watching the scenery, with us arriving into Paris about 40 minutes after we should have. The taxi drive to our hotel took us past the Champs Élysées and we got a view of the Arc de Triumph. We also drove over the Seine and saw the Eiffel Tower which is only about 300 metres from our hotel.
After checking in and dumping our bags we walked to a local cafe and enjoyed a nice Parisian dinner before crashing for the night.