Hello, I'm Simon Calder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on travelling, whether you're just dreaming of a great escape or luckily like me actually out and about. And I'm obviously on another train. This one is one of the RER Suburban Express trains that travels across

Paris. Now it's interesting because this has been around since I think the 1970s and the UK is just

catching up in the shape of the crossrail project which may or may not open

sometime this year but the great news is that the sun is shining and I am in the French

capital now an awful lot to tell you about. I've obviously been talking about France

a lot this week, our second favourite country, the most popular nation in the world for foreign tourists,

and yet for the past four weeks it has been off limits to us. Well, it's now open. I had an

interesting journey. At one point, well, the only point that mattered really, when I arrived at the port of Dieppe,

the guy on the counter said, right, where's your PCR test?

And I said, I don't think my good friend that I need one.

And eventually he agreed with me.

You need a lateral flow test taken in 24 hours before departure for France.

After that, I think it was fairly straightforward.

I travelled from there into Rouen, lovely city on the Sen, and then effectively followed the valley of the

Sen all the way up to Paris on another non-stop, very comfortable train, really quite well

patron. Is that a word? Lots of people on it anyway, considering it was silly o'clock in the

morning. Now, when you get to

Paris everything is different different from the UK and different from what Paris was like before

obviously the crucial thing is that you need to wear a mask pretty much all the time. Now, I haven't yet been

able to find out exactly what the law is, but in a sense that doesn't matter. The vast majority

of people wear masks indoors and out. You only remove it as far as I could see while seated

in a cafe or restaurant.

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