The next day dawned too early for us. The hostel was a dark and a quiet corner of the earth when we hurriedly got ready to catch the train for our trip to Rome. The greatest tragedy of the entire affair was not that we were leaving Paris without spending much time there; it was that the hostel had not yet opened up their breakfast counter which is usually functional from 0700 hours.
We cast a hopeful eye towards the cafétaria before heading out of the door to the cold Sunday morning. A short walk back to the metro and changing the lines a couple of times before we came to Gare de Lyon eventually. The geographic convenience of housing the metro and the Eurail lines in the same complex helped the cause considerably and we commended the wise and the natural choice of such a construction. The Eurail lines can easily be found by chasing the escalators to the highest level possible till you reach what can be described ground level and you come across the terminal bank.
The next task is a bit tricky but can be surmounted by some quick observatory practices. First, find which terminal platform your train leaves from. This is combined exercise of scanning your boarding card (which is assigned to you when a reservation has been confirmed) for your train number from among the other undecipherable jargon printed therein and then matching that against a similar number printed on one of the innumerable screens displaying the schedule. If you could do that much, finding the platform number is a matter of child's play.
We were travelling to Roma via Milano as there were no direct trains available from Paris. Bags laden, hungry stomachs non-withstanding, we boarded onto the assigned coach on our way to further unknowns. The train was, as expected, more punctual than Mr.X ever was...
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