Back to Paris from Marseille 10-7-15

Today we bid Au Revoir to Marseille and took the TGV back to Paris.  For those of you who are not aware of it, the TGV stands for Train Grande Vitesse (High Speed Train) and it goes from Marseille on the Mediterranean coast all the way up to Paris in a smidge over 3 hours.  That's about 480 miles in 3 hours, at one point I noticed that the little display showed our speed at 302 Km/Hour or around 187 mi/hr.  We were flying, but the fun part is that when the vistas are open it doesn't seem like you're going that fast.  We had a brief stop in Lyon to trade passengers and then off like a rocket again.
We were up before sunrise (approx 8:00), and the train left at 8:40.  Since our hotel, Hotel Alex, was right across the street from Gare St. Charles it was a 5 minute walk to be right at the train.  If you have a stay planned in Marseille the Hotel Alex might be a good choice, it's reasonably priced and quite nicely appointed, very clean, but if you're a light sleeper you may want to bring earplugs if your room is on a lower floor,  the top floor is very quiet.
We were back in Paris by just after noon, and as soon as we walked out of the station we were blessed with a view of a procession of striking workers, but no impact so no harm.  We passed the rest of the day catching up on apartment stuff and Deb did laundry.  Since we leave again in about a week for Berlin-Prague-Vienna for a few weeks we need all of our clothes cleaned and ready.  I broke another piece of the tooth I had repaired a few months back just before we left on this trip (bad luck), so I need to see the dentist again before we leave,  I made the appointment on the train down to meet Mel and Mar, so all is good.