WE HAVE ARRIVED (sort of)
Picking up after we landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris we gathered up our baggage and started across the terminal to the attached Train Grand Vitesse (TGV) station to catch our train to Avignon in the south of France.
Imagine our surprise when we found out that Peter had mistakenly made the reservations from Gare de Lyon in downtown Paris and that we would have to take the metro train from de Gaulle into Paris to catch the TGV. We had a window of about two and a half hours to do this. Neither of us speaks French and therefore we had to rely on the kindness of strangers and the very helpful Metro information services. We bought our tickets, had to switch trains once, switch lines once and then find the departure point at Gare de Lyon for our TGV train to Avignon.
Thankfully we managed to do all this and locate our proper train in time.
The departure halls at Gare de Lyon were amazing; very large and remarkably laid out for efficiency once you know the system. There are high-speed trains leaving from Paris to many points in France. 
Travel by car from Paris to Avignon in the Provence Region of France can take about six hours and thirty minutes. The modern re-designed TGV’s have a top speed of 320 KPH and are incredibly smooth riding. Our train ran non-stop from Paris to Avignon and took about two hours and forty minutes!
