Day 4

Monday, June 9th, 1997

I had to check out of the hotel before noon. Besides, my feet began to ached after two days of intensive walking in Paris. So I decided not to go anywhere in Paris on Monday. I packed my luggage, had a last look of my little cozy room at Paris, checked out of hotel and headed to the Paris North train station. After spending 10 minutes figuring out how to buy a calling card from a vending machine, I made a phone call to the US Consulate at Frankfurt. They told me my interview for the visa was scheduled on Tuesday (why wouldn't they told me this when I was in Frankfurt?). and I must be there before 9 am. I remembered I saw from a guy's Europe tour webpage that there was a very nice youth hostel in an half-ruined castle on top of a moutain overlooking Rhine river (he couldn't remember exactly where it was though). I checked the Europe tour book and it's in Koblentz, one hour away from Frankfurt. I decided to spend my night there before going to the consulte in the morning. To get there before it's too late I only have barely enough time to pay a short visit to Brussels. Brussels in not that much an attractive city to me so I booked a seat at Thylas high speed train to make this portion of trip more worthwhile. <....to be continue>

Eiffel, night and day