Chez Katherine

Friday 16 November 2007
We spent just a few days in Saint-Denis before going to Vienna; as we arrived the centre looked strangely empty of Rugby World Cup posters and paraphernalia, and there was a large space where the giant screens had been. Previously it had been a bus station - what next?
We had trouble driving up to the apartment as the big street door was locked, perhaps because it was a public holiday, and N had to go and find someone with a key. All this was quite apart from the new entry « badges »; these were not yet available but we were assured by the gardienne that we would be able to get in with our keys as usual when we came back from Vienna late at night the week after!
I managed to buy two red jackets prior to my trip; a silky patterned one with a vaguely Japanese look about it, (from a shop in Montmartre full of very fussy wedding outfits) to wear to the opera and other evening concerts, and a slightly more casual boiled wool one from Jacqueline Riu. I was pleased to see several fashion shops full of bright red clothes, as it is one of my favourite colours. On the Saturday I also had my eyebrows done, bought our train tickets to the airport (Roissy Charles de Gaulle) ready for Monday and went to FNAC for a street plan of Vienna and a small German phrase book. The new station at Saint-Denis is at long last partially finished; may be complete by about Christmas. N stayed at home and put his collection of euro coins into some very fine new albums designed especially for the purpose which had arrived by post at LNL and been brought with us to Saint-Denis where the coin collection was.
In the evening we went round for apéritifs to the Palmers’ new apartment; a modern block in a quiet street near the Basilique, on two floors with a wonderful large terrace overlooking communal gardens. We stayed there a long time waiting to meet their friend Stuart who never turned up; a bit like waiting for Godot.
On Sunday morning we took the metro to the Boulevard de la Chapelle where there should have been a vide-greniers (car boot sale) but there wasn't, so we had a nice walk instead, much the same area as I had covered on Friday afternoon during my jacket shopping. The afternoon was spent in last minute pre-journey tasks, and reading aloud some more of « The Wind in the Willows » which we had brought with us. (When I had put it into my bag together with Kafka‘s « The Metamorphosis »; I thought what a very wide-ranging selection of reading....)
We set off early Monday morning in the dark and arrived at the airport in reasonable time; N was a little surprised to find that the flights he had booked with Air Berlin were now with an airline called Niki. The lettering and the oval surrounding it were red which made it look very like the Kit-Kat logo, so from then on he referred to it as Kit-Kat Airways.
Anyway, the plane was newer and smarter than many of the low cost planes we had been used to; there were free newspapers and magazines and I had a very large cooked breakfast to make up for only having had a cup of tea before leaving. We took a bus from the airport to our hotel and were pleased to find that we could check in, although it was only about midday.
I remembered that what I particularly liked about Germanic hotels were the varied and copious breakfasts and the quilts on the beds instead of sheets and blankets, and was not disappointed! The hotel was excellent; in a quiet little street near the Cathedral, with helpful staff and lots of available information. We had a large cosy room on the fourth floor, warm and high enough up to catch any sun that was going. Just outside on the landing was the hotel’s only public computer, convenient for N who kept checking e-mail messages every day. For the first half of the week no-one else seemed to be using it, and then it was occupied almost all the time.
Every morning when we took the lift down to breakfast - bacon, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, cakes, savoury pâtés, cheeses and pumpernickel bread available every day, in addition to all the usual fruit, cereals, juices, yoghurts, other kinds of bread and rolls, hot drinks, jams and honey - the lift was full of very cold air picked up on its journey down to the front door. I found the weather the only disadvantage during our stay, apart from Sunday of which more later; it was a good few degrees colder than Paris, mostly with very cold strong winds and a lot of icy rain. We were glad we had taken all our warmest clothes, including hats; N had managed to leave his gloves behind in the car but somehow survived without buying any more.
That first day we walked around the streets near the Stephansdom, (St Stephen’s Cathedral) looked at all the shops in the Kärtnerstrasse. In the Cathedral I thought of Mozart arriving to work there and lodging nearby and we saw a poster for a Mass by Michael Haydn on Sunday morning, and decided we would go. We had lunch at a modern café in the Kärtnerstrasse, N having his first viener schnitzel of the stay; I was still full of breakfast and had a sandwich. We then strolled along to the opera house and found we were just in time to join a guided tour starting at three o'clock. We were pleased at this, as just before leaving we had heard we had been allotted tickets for the Saturday evening from the waiting list - Arabella by Richard Strauss. It was a very thorough tour and took in all the big reception rooms, the Imperial Box, the splendid auditorium and backstage and I was particularly pleased to find much to do with Mahler, whose musical career there I had just finished reading about; his piano, various programmes, photographs, busts and portraits and a well-thumbed score used by him, very grubby, full of his notes and sellotape! (I’m not sure but I think it was The Marriage of Figaro.) We then came across the Café Mozart, a delightful place, warm and welcoming and full of traditional waiters, coffees, cakes and newspapers on their wooden frames. I was fascinated by a poster on the wall portraying every kind of coffee, hot chocolate and cake available and bought a copy to take home. We were also interested to read that the café was a favourite of Graham Green’s and had featured in the film The Third Man. After a rest at the hotel (we had got up very early) we had dinner in a sort of bier-keller next door. This time it was my turn for the schnitzel and N had a huge tureen full of soup to himself containing dumplings and noodles and all manner of indefinable things.
For our second day we had already booked a guided tour on foot, and were collected from our hotel by minibus which took us (via several other hotels) to an assembly point by the station, going past lots of other interesting sights on the way. Having found our guide and other tour members we were driven by the same minibus to the Imperial Crypt where the tour proper started. Our guide was very entertaining and knowledgeable, and told us a great deal about the members of the Hapsburg family whose ornate metal coffins we saw in the crypt. The second part of the tour took in the Spanish Riding School - a building uncannily like the Senate House in Cambridge; two storeys tall with a white decorated ceiling and very high windows and a balcony round the inside edge at second floor level. Unlike the Senate House however, there was a royal box at one end and sand all over the floor, and we watched the horses take their « morning exercise » mounted by their well-dressed riders. Unfortunately no photos allowed, so as not to frighten the horses.
The third and final part of the tour, and the most interesting, I thought, dealt with Sisi, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, wife of Emperor Franz Josef. Until then all I knew about Sisi, thanks to a back copy of the magazine Maisons Normandes, was that she had briefly stayed in a château in Normandy in the 1880’s. We were taken through her imperial apartments, saw dresses, furniture, her exercise equipment, (!) cosmetics, diets, scales, portraits and photographs and a copy of her own private railway carriage. By the end of the tour when we thanked our guide and went off to find some well-deserved lunch and a sit-down, I was determined to find a book about Sisi (preferably not in German) so that I could find out more. It was difficult to avoid her as one went about Vienna; she seemed to be a very valuable tourist attraction.
The first café we came cross was the Griensteidl. We learned that it made sense to arrive for lunch not long after 12.00 as by 1.00 there were queues of people waiting for tables and keen to get in from the cold. Our tour (as we had hoped) had given us lots of ideas of other places to visit and after lunch we set off for the Albertina gallery which we had glimpsed the day before from the Café Mozart. It was well set out and contained a fine collection of modern art, but we realised that two long outings in one day were not good, either for our brains or for our feet! We went back to the hotel for a rest, stopping to look in a little supermarket nearby and buy some of our favourite Ritter chocolate, and a couple of packets of goulash soup mix. That evening we had supper in the opera café; on the large screen on the wall we were able to watch a live relay of the performance of Arabella from the auditorium, giving us an idea of what to expect on Saturday. During the interval the café suddenly became a lot more crowded, as well-heeled opera-goers popped in for snacks.
The next art gallery on our list was the Kunsthistorisches Museum, containg collections of works built up over the centuries by the Hapsburgs. This involved taking the underground for the first time, which proved very simple; we invested in 3-day tickets also usable on trams and buses. N was very pleased to see quite a few paintings by the Bruegels; I enjoyed these too but was pleasantly surprised to find a painting of Suffolk by Thomas Gainsborough. The gallery was vast and took us all the morning; fortunately we came across a wonderfully decorated restaurant in the museum itself and after lunch found the Museum Shop. N bought several Christmas presents and I was delighted to find a definitive biography of Sisi translated into English! As we were due to go out in the evening and it was cold and windy we went back to the hotel; N wrote postcards and snoozed and I was very happy putting my feet up and reading the first three chapters of my new book. In fact this was such a good arrangement that we adopted it for most of the rest of our stay - out sightseeing first thing in the morning after a good breakfast and then after a café lunch back in the warm for a rest and a read; once I had the book to go back to it was a wonderful treat to be able to get on with it every afternoon. And towards the end of our stay we were out almost every evening. As N said, if we had been there in the summer we would probably have sat in nice gardens after lunch every day, but the weather was not conducive to being out long. Another factor was that although we were still in the same time zone, the sun rose and set about an hour earlier than in Paris, which made for very dark afternoons. N realised he had better get an absorbing book too, and came back with a German translation of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile.
On Wednesday evening we had tickets for a Mozart & Strauss concert at the Schönbrunn Palace, several underground stations away. On the way to the station we had supper at the Café Europa where we’d had lunch on our first day, reached Schönbrunn far too early so had drinks and a look round, noting that was where the young Mozart’s meeting with Empress Maria Theresa had taken place. N was little disappointed with the event, as instead of the promised orchestra there was only a sextet - although admittedly very good - and he maintained that the audience consisted mostly of badly dressed tourists! (We of course were wearing our best jackets.) As well as the sextet there were two dancers and two singers for various items of the programme, and after each item we could hear the howling wind whistling around the building. The programme ended with very good rendering of Strauss’ Blue Danube waltz, so that the next morning and for several others after it I woke up with the tune in my head, but I suppose this is only to be expected in Vienna. They played the Radetsky March as an encore; one of my favourite pieces, and I feel I know so much more about Radetsky now, having read about him in the Life of Mahler, and seen a bust of him on the guided tour.
Having changed trains on our way home on the underground, I caught sight on the platform of the two singers we had just been listening to, obviously on their way home too, with all their finery in carrier bags, as N said, looking quite ordinary and just like anybody else!
I wanted to visit the MAK museum (Museum für Angewandte Kunst; Applied Arts Museum) and N wanted to see the paintings by Klimt at the Belvedere Museum; the MAK museum was closed on Thursdays so we set off intending to go to the Belvedere, stopping to look at Mozart’s house near the cathedral, where we were due to go to a concert on Friday evening. We took the underground to Karlsplatz and noticed an exit sign to the Musikverein, the large impressive concert hall where the New Year’s Day concert takes place every year. Not surprisingly there were many posters outside; one advertising Mahler’s first symphony made me very excited at the possibility of hearing it in Vienna, but it was (a) all sold out and (b) on the same evening as we were going to the opera. In the end N managed to get tickets for Sunday; Zubin Mehta conducting a Florentine orchestra in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for wind instruments and Tchaikovsky’s Pathètique Symphony, both pieces I had got to know when N played them in the RATP orchestra in Paris and I had attended both final rehearsals and performances.
Feeling very pleased with ourselves we then went on to look at a Brahms memorial (pausing for photos of this and the Musikverein) and then looked at the Karlskirche, a very ornate Baroque church that N didn’t like at all; it was full of scaffolding and building improvement works and seemed to have some connection with Bruckner; though unfortunately our German wasn’t quite good enough to work out what.
We went back to trying to find our way to the Belvedere Museums, got lost round a Russian memorial and the French Embassy and eventually found the Belvedere gardens and fountains which seemed to have been designed by someone with a good working knowledge of the Château of Versailles. At last, after seeing many other paintings we finally came across the Klimts; as N said we had set off to see them first thing that morning and our mission was finally accomplished at 12.15! The gallery café and shop were good; I had a deliciously unusual carrot and ginger cream soup. We caught an old-fashioned tram outside, and stopped to look at some shops we had noticed earlier, the Ringstrasse Galerien, containing a Christmas market (throughout our stay we noticed little huts being erected for seasonal markets in various parts of the city.)
N asked me to do some research on finding a restaurant for dinner that evening, so I went downstairs and read the hotel notice board and decided on a well-recommended one in the Wipplingerstrasse, not far away but in a direction we had not yet explored. It was extremely difficult to find - first of all when we thought we had found number 34 there seemed to be some kind of formal reception going on, and coats were being taken in and guests proceeding upstairs. (N said we should have gone in too and pretended we were part of it; I wasn’t certain of our ability to do this in German.) N asked about the restaurant; no-one had heard of it. We then walked along the pavement and could see a restaurant down below through flat roof windows, but couldn’t work out how to get to it! N pushed open a door which led to the kitchens, and eventually when it had become like some sort of bad dream, we managed to find our way in by walking though a very elegant garden & interior décor boutique. And eventually sat down at a table!
It was almost empty - presumably no-one else could find the way in either - but very good Italian food very simply served on white plates on white cloths, with white candles and white roses. For the second time that day I had a lovely new unusual taste - vanilla caramel mousse with dates.
On Friday morning we set out to visit the rest of Schönbrunn Palace in the daylight and as before the weather was terrible and kept turning my umbrella inside out. (It had been slightly milder the day before.) Surprisingly it was very crowded, but after we had seen all the formal rooms on display inside, and the excellent shop where you could buy a paper wig guaranteed to make you look like Mozart in two minutes - which we resisted - tried to look at the gardens and outbuildings but gave up as it was so windy and so cold.
We took the underground back to the city centre, heading for the Café Central, from where Madeleine had bought us a chocolate cake in a wooden box during her visit to Vienna. It was an excellent café, once more we arrived early and did not have to queue; by this time there was horizontal driving rain and half an hour later it was very crowded and every time the door opened wind and rain blew in. We both had excellent warm soups; N had another large slice of their cake and pronounced it much better than sachertorte. I only had room for a very small but delicious chestnut and chocolate cake.
After spending the rest of the afternoon at our hotel, we set out at about 5.00 to visit Mozart’s house in the Domgasse, the only one of his many residences and lodgings in Vienna still in existence. The apartment was several floors up, and had apparently been refitted as a tourist attraction last year, with a shop and café and an animated filmstrip in the entrance showing Mozart arriving by carriage in Vienna in the snow. The apartment itself was almost empty which I found very moving; there were screens showing the relevant excerpts from the film Amadeus when Mozart père came to visit.
We bought a few things from the shop and went round the corner to another of Mozart’s residences known as the Figarohaus; the building still stands but the lodging - where he is reputed to have written The Marriage of Figaro - no longer exists. We had booked tickets for a chamber concert over the internet and arrived rather early to pick them up, so walked around the nearby streets for a while, taking in a marvellous kitchen shop where I bought a deep red mixing bowl which I had to keep carefully under my seat once we did get to the concert. (We realised the shop staff were anxious for us to leave as it was time to close the shop.) The « auditorium » - where Mozart himself had often played - was tiny, not much larger then a drawing room, and the walls and ceiling were decorated with beautiful Italianate designs. There were about 60 chairs tightly packed in rows and every time the door opened it was very cold; strange because it was impossible to see how or why the room was warm, as there was no sign of any kind of heating apparatus.
The programme consisted of several string quartets by Mozart and Haydn, played by an excellent quartet dressed in late 18th century costume, although without wigs; I felt they should have gone along and bought some from the Schönbrunn shop, certainly the violist and cellist, who were both very thin on top. During the interval N struck up a conversation with an American man sitting next to him, covering varied subjects as Vienna, George Bush, music, currency and travel.
Afterwards we had dinner at a very good Italian restaurant nearby, where there were photos on the walls of previous visits by Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Ricardo Muti and André Previn, to name but a few. I ate delicious pasta and N had goose and it was a temporary relief to be able to speak Italian instead of German, although very confusing again afterwards.
On Saturday morning we went to the MAK museum and were delighted to find admission was free on Saturdays. It was rather a strange place; had begun life under Emperor Franz Josef as a showcase for contemporary art and industry, and then diversified and expanded over the years to include modern collections and displays of textiles, china, glass and furniture. I always find china and furniture fascinating, but N wasn’t sure if he wanted to spend time looking at a lot of chairs, so spent time sitting on them instead, against the walls of the central galleries were modern metal-framed sofas covered with printed textiles. I was intrigued to see that one of the many chairs on display bore a distinct resemblance to mine - the one found in the garage at LNL, a bentwood chair with arms and a round seat which I had re-caned, which now lives beside the phone. The one in the museum was simply labelled « Vienna circa 1885 ».
The MAK museum shop was full of unusual things which were far too big to take home on the plane; I especially liked some vases in bright plain colours which turned out to be made of rubber; not to be clutched at when full of water and flowers, I think.
We then went on to inspect the nearby city air terminal, and decided it would be a good idea to check in there early for our flight home on Monday, rather than take the bus as we had on arrival. From there we had a look at the Rathaus district, which we hadn’t seen before, but there was very little to see - perhaps because it was the weekend - and once again the weather was far from pleasant so we ended up having lunch in a very authentic student bier-keller, which I didn’t like nearly as much as the cafés where you could look out of the windows.
In the afternoon I went shopping on my own in the Kärtnerstrasse, while N stayed at the hotel and at about 5.30 we set off for the opera house. It was far too wet to walk all the way in my satin shoes, so I wore boots and took the shoes in a tasteful cloth bag bought at the Mozart shop the day before. I intended to hand the bag of boots in with my coat, but in the event as we were in a box, we had our own little « cloakroom » at the back. It was a feature of Vienna life throughout our stay that all restaurants, concert houses, galleries and museums had cloakrooms to hand in one’s coat, hat, scarf, gloves and umbrella, as it was always so cold and wet outside and so warm indoors; it certainly made visiting museums and galleries much more comfortable.
We had supper at the opera café again, far more crowded than last time, with several reserved tables and others already full of smartly-dressed opera-goers. I ate the same thing as before as it was so good, a lovely mixture of Italian cold meats and antipasti called Rossini. (Many of the dishes had similar musical names....Three Tenors, for example) This time the large screens on the wall were showing « trailers » of the rest of the season’s productions. I was pleasantly surprised to find how many of them I knew.
Thanks to our guided tour we were quite familiar with the building and enjoyed walking round the different rooms and watching all the people, just as we do in Paris. We had had the sur-titling method explained to us during the guided tour; instead of large sur-titles over the top of the stage each seat had its own tiny screen with a choice of titles in English or German! N chose German and I chose English, but he kept sneaking glances at mine. (Only to see how things were translated, he said.)
The opera - Arabella - was sung in German, but thanks to the titles I was able to follow it all with no trouble at all and enjoyed it tremendously; even though it was nothing like I had ever seen before. The Vienna Philharmonic was duly impressive too; we tried to see whether we recognised any of them from the New Year’s Day concert, but no. There were several other ladies in our box; we all said « Guten Abend » to each other politely, and N was worried about the lady behind us not being able to see; she assured him she could hear perfectly and knew the story.
Once it was all over we said good night to them all again, and made our way outside where there were queues of taxis; fortunately we could get back to our hotel on foot. We both felt that it had been a wonderful evening, and N said he thought it was one of the greatest events of his life.
On Sunday morning when we looked out of the window sleet was falling instead of rain, slowly revolving downwards and melting on the ground. After breakfast we set off round the corner to the Stephansdom in time for 10.15 Mass, and managed to find places near the back. At first I found the Catholic service in German very strange; it seemed to be far more appropriate in French or Italian, but gradually recognised texts I had sung in German at various times. The spoken service was punctuated by the sung sections of the Haydn Mass; the first time I had ever heard it like that, but told myself that was how it was intended, not to be performed on a Saturday evening in a Cambridge concert hall. I had trouble recognising the Old Testament lesson, but did better with the New, and we both worked out when the Notices were being read. When the service was over we went up by the side of the altar to see the little orchestra which had played throughout, alongside the organ; the players all in their coats and a very young conductor, whom N said must feel himself following in Mozart’s and Haydn’s footsteps.
We walked out on to the steps at the side of the cathedral, and found the whole place covered in snow! I immediately began to take photos, first of a snow-covered model of the cathedral, then of N and of the rows of horses waiting patiently in rows with their carriages. We didn’t really know where we planned to go, and neither did anyone else it seemed, everyone was just walking about enjoying the snow. In the next road we came across loud amplified Strauss waltz music, and couples dancing in the snowy street; did this happen every Sunday morning, we wondered?
Eventually we had walked far enough and were feeling rather wet and cold, and arrived at the Griensteidl café again, and went in for some very welcome soup. At least I did, N suddenly realised it was Sunday Lunch time, and had something more substantial. By then we were discussing what else we wanted to see in the 24 hours we had left in Vienna; I was keen to see the Imperial Furniture Depot (N said no, not more chairs) and as it was closed on Mondays decided I would go that afternoon, while N went straight back to the hotel. I was very impressed to see snow-ploughs already hard at work outside the café, on a Sunday afternoon! It took me three underground stops and a lot of walking to reach the museum - the pavements were very slushy and snow kept dripping and sliding off the awnings over the shop windows. I was glad when I eventually arrived and even more glad of a cloakroom to leave my coat, umbrella etc.
The Imperial Furniture Depot contains all the unwanted furniture, paintings, textiles, china and glass removed from the Hapsburg palaces over several centuries, and has been open to the public since the 1920’s. Very few members of the public wanted to see it that afternoon, and I had the place almost to myself. There were several different themes running through it; rooms full of Sisi memorabilia of course, pictures and cine-film of various films made of Sisi’s life during the 1950’s starring Romy Schneider, using a lot of the original furniture; the film excerpts being shown alongside the items of furniture. There were also room settings one could look into, of various styles and periods, and then simply piles of paintings, chairs, beds, hat-stands, tables, writing desks, footstools and a roomful of wooden things I thought at first were plant holders but turned out to be spittoons! (I thought I would not like to have to clean wooden spittoons.) There were many glass cases of china, vases, table settings and some chamber pots labelled in English « For the use of Imperial Servants ».
In several museums and guides I had become aware of the name Biedermeier, describing a certain era in early 19th century Vienna, a cosy, homely, bourgeois style of furniture; an era, philosophy, a way of life. Nowhere could I find out the origin of the word Biedermeier however, and here it was again in the furniture depot, describing interiors and very specifically the time between the Congress of Vienna in 1816 and the Revolution of 1848. As the place was deserted I decided to ask one of the nearby museum guides what it meant; unfortunately the poor young man had an awful stammer and not much English. He told me more or less what I already knew; I said I'd kept coming across this word ever since I’d arrived in Vienna, but what was its origin? Was Biedermeier an architect? No, said the young man and assured me that when I got up to the next floor of the museum there would be a display about it. I thanked him and moved on, but after a few minutes he came up to me with a large picture book, text in English, and pointed to a paragraph telling me that Biedermeier was never a real person; there could have been 20 or so cabinet-makers in Vienna with that name in the early 1830’s, but it was thought to be a typical Viennese name; a sort of Mr Everyman. I thanked him very much and felt at last I had got to the bottom of the matter.
On the way back to the hotel the snow had become fine rain and by the time went out again to eat it was almost dry! We ate in a cheap modern Italian place in the opposite direction from the Cathedral, and then made our way to the Musikverein. The concert hall itself was very impressive, but the rooms and corridors behind were not nearly as spacious as at the opera house, and we hadn’t had the advantage of a guided tour to know our way about. We climbed up many flights of stairs to reach our places - almost like being at the Albert Hall - and then found we could have left our coats much nearer to our seats. These were in a kind of side balcony, but reached through a special numbered door as though it were a box.
The music itself was wonderful though, such an amazing impressive sound, and we felt very lucky to have been able to hear it, and that next January 1st we would look at the televised concert in quite a different way.
Monday was our last day - our flight was due to leave at 7.00 in the evening - so after a final breakfast we checked out and took the underground to the air terminal and checked in our luggage, hoping we would see it again that evening in Paris. The weather had improved dramatically; dry and sunny, although TV and newspapers were full of the surprise early winter of the day before, and there was still an icy cold wind. It did mean however that we could visit the one attraction N still wanted to see - the Prater, with its meadows and fun fair and the famous Big Wheel. The fun fair looked very sadly out of season and closed, and was full of dead leaves, like everywhere else in Vienna; we had seen huge heaps of them in corners of parks. Once we had seen and photographed everything we took a tram back to the city centre; it turned out to be a circular route so we went round again; as it was cold, windy and sunny it was very pleasant looking at all the views out of the tram windows! In all we went round four times during the day, pausing once or twice to get out and look at streets and shops we hadn’t seen before and also to have lunch at the Imperial Hotel, a very elegant place which had its own cloakroom at the entrance.
We had an excellent lunch and enjoyed the warmth and comfort; I was also impressed by the mirrored Ladies Room, with a hand towel system I had never seen before - small towels were threaded onto a silver pole, and once used fell to the bottom of the pole! There were also roses, and free perfumed hand lotion.
Eventually it was time to get back our coats again, and go round for one last tram ride; the weather was getting darker and it was good to be able to take the train directly to the air terminal without being outdoors again. The airport train was very modern and efficient, and the airport itself small but very busy.
We spent our spare time looking at shops and having our first and last apple strudel of the visit - disappointing I thought, as N had ordered it with custard. The flight was good, although dark, and therefore not much to see! Our luggage turned up as expected at Roissy, and we were lucky to get both our RER trains with no waiting, thus getting home by about 10.30, and managing to get into the building with no trouble at all from keys or badges!