Where do we go post-Camino to have a break and relax? We go to Paris, where else? And moreover, we are hoping that the lessons we have learnt on the Camino have stuck, and where else to practice than a city with 2.2 million people and where 27 million tourists come to visit a year.
Yes, culture shock straight away but this time, we see this city in a completely different light to what we did pre-Camino! Our biggest thrill was getting to eat something that wasn’t “Menu del dia” (i.e. Menu of the Day). We had lots of choice now gastronomically 🙂
We took a day trip to Versailles & you could describe it as a day riddled with challenges that normally we would’ve acted differently. But with only less than a week since completing our Camino, maybe we have faced our first chance to practice what we learnt!
Today we got rained upon, we got blown away, we had to line up for over 2 hours, we were surrounded by hundreds of people squeezing through tiny doorways and we had our train cancelled and needed to find another way back to the hotel.
Not once did we lose our cool and not once did we utter a negative comment and not once did we resent the situation we were in. Hopefully, we are beginning to realise that the negative reactions creates nothing else but pain for ourselves. And why would we choose to do that?
All the while, we accepted the situation we were in and carried on. We saw lots of other emotions in our fellow travellers and we just knew which ones we wanted to be – the happy and carefree ones that don’t let these type of things spoil their experience. Because until we can learn that this is part of the experience, we will never really be happy.
"Sees" the Day 
It sounds a lot like my last visit to Versailles! It bucketed down with rain, the train broke down and was over an hour late so we missed out pre-booked entry time and the entrance was chaos once the trains starting arriving. But ticket staff were wonderful and gave us another entry straight away.
But because it was wet, we spent more in Marie Antoinette’s cottage and other places we may not otherwise have lingered.
So, you are right, there is no point fretting over things you can’t change, you might as well look for the good.
When you are away as long as you have been, there will be a hiccup, something you were dying to see, will be covered in scaffolding, such is life!
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Again beautifully said 🙂 Maybe Versailles is always like that 😉
But there will always be a hiccup if we think it is a hiccup – if we think of it as just part of the experience (neither great or disastrous) then …. nothing will seem soooo BAD, right?
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Absolutely right. If we expect life to be a series of perfect events, then it will seem like there are lots of hiccups.
I think sometimes it’s harder to weather them when you are travelling and know you can’t come back next week and do it over – especially if it is something you’ve been looking forward to for a long time.
But your outlook on it is definitely worth mastering! 🙂
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