We arrived in Paris at 9am (2am central time). Generally I avoid saying "my time" because it only makes you feel worse, but for the sake of this post I will say it. So we had breakfast on the plane about 12:30am "our time". Generally this is not a problem, you just start moving, Sony take a nap, and sleep a lot the first night. Well... Our first night was supposed to be an overnight train to Lourdes. Come to find out there is no overnight train to Lourdes. But there is one leaving at 5:30pm from Paris and arriving at 11;30pm in Lourdes. Perfect timing, too late to get a hotel. So, instead of sleeping at night , like I would suggest for jet-lag, we promptly fell asleep on the train and then spent midnight till morning awake. Brilliant. The next day we spent 7 hora on a train, a bus, and a taxi getting to St Jean where we were to begin the pilgrimage. We thought we'd be able to take the train the whole way... But guess who's on strike? That's right, the French railway workers. Seriously, not a day goes by when there isn't some strike in France, and it's usually a form of transportation. Anyway, Emily was so tired on the bus she couldn't keep her head up. I was afraid we would both be asleep and miss our stop (this has happened to me on a train before). Luckily we made it to St. Jean the evening before our start on the Camino. We got about 9 hours of sleep that night bringing our total up to ... 12 hours for the past 3 nights. That's how NOT to survive jet-lag.
If you want to survive jet-lag I HIGHLY recommend booking a hotel room whoever you're going! Sleeping strange hours on outdoor benches, train cars, and bus seats just ain't gonna cut it!
