To Nice, France

Friday was a long day of traveling. Started with a 6:30 wake up to meet the local train at 7:00 and ended when we walked out of the Nice train station at 9:30. “Are cities really that far apart in Europe”, you ask. No, but when you don’t make reservations you don’t always get on the trains you were planning on. The lack of reservations also adds a little stress to my day because I feel responsible for another person. Thankfully we did end up in Nice and found a place to stay at 10:30 at night (prayers were made and answered on that one). I won’t say that yesterday was a total loss though.

The route we are taking from Barcelona to Rome hugs the coasts of Spain, France, and Italy. There are times when you look out into the Ligurian Sea and the train is maybe 30 yards from the water. The landscape is amazing. The beaches are white and the sea is an almost perfect blue-green. Houses with Spanish tiled roofs and white and yellow colored houses fill in long the coast. Many yachts and cruise ships were seen during this journey. I have pictures and LA has video but it won’t do it justice.

We met a couple friends along the way as well. Kathryn from Australia just graduated from James Cook University and is “on holiday” for 4 weeks. She had the same problem we did about reservations. She was on the exact same trains we were the entire day. She was fun to talk with on the train rides and hear about Australia. In fact, she was in line to make reservations for Saturday and was right in front of me when we were in Montpellier. She walked up asked for a particular route and got it without a problem. I walk up after her and ask for a route like hers and they tell me it is booked. What? On a train that sits 2000 people that girl got that last reservation? I tried 20 different trips to get to Rom e and every time the agent told me the trip was complete. So we had to get tickets to go completely out of our way to get to Rome.

We have one more long day of traveling to Rome and then the rest are shorter trips. It will be nice to get into Rome tomorrow, assuming we get up early and change our awful tickets, and spend a few days in a city with that kind of history. I really want to taste some real Italian food, too.