Long Train to Bologna

On the second Monday of our trip we awoke very early in Marseilles, around 5:30 AM, and I tried to go out for pastries, but unfortunately none of the shops opened till 7:00 AM.  We left the hotel and hopped the metro to the train station (only two stops back) and bought some panini from the bar, which seemed to have been open all night and had people drinking beer at 6:00 in the morning!

We boarded the train and Jeanette was tired out, but thoroughly annoyed by a man in the car who had the worst hacking cough you could imagine.  It seemed to unnerve a few of the passengers, but we didn't get the bird flu, TB, or anything else like that, so it must have been fine.

I tried to study some Italian along the way, but I was very tired as well.  Watching the stations pass by, I came to realize that we were on track to miss our next train, the second of three that we were supposed to take.  We arrived eventually and would figure it out.

On the platform, I found a conductor who told us to just board the next train and there would be no problem, but he left me a little skeptical.

Earlier, on the way out of the train, I had paused to help a younger French girl retrieve her bag from the overhead compartment.  I noticed that she was standing on the platform and had also apparently missed the same train.  I approached her and asked her in French if she had and she confirmed that she was in the same situation.  After asking her what we should do, she also thought that we should hop the next train, but first told me that we needed to "composter" the tickets.  Thinking that she somehow meant recycle or destroy, I was quite confused until I realized that she meant "validate."

We validated the tickets, boarded the next train, and I began chatting with Marie while Jeanette checked out the scenery through the window and tried to catch some sleep.  I discovered that I remembered much more French than I would have thought possible, given that it had been about 12 years since I had last spoken it.  It helped that Marie spoke little English, or was perhaps a bit too shy to try, and it was fun to make up the difference in French.

We stopped in Nice and Marie helped us at the ticket counter.  We were told to go on to Ventimiglia where we would have to stop and change our tickets for the rest of the trip.  As Marie was headed to a town near Milan, she needed to do the same.  The ride from Nice to Ventimiglia was beautiful, bringing us through the Cannes area and Monaco.  Monaco was like an Old World version of Sausalito.  Gorgeous.

In Ventimiglia, we were forced to change tickets and Marie was told that she had to buy another ticket, which later (too late) turned out not to have been true.  She then accepted our offer to walk out into the town and have lunch, after helping us greatly with Italian.  I forgot that Ventimiglia was in Italy, not France so the French wouldn't help much there, and she was fluent.  Marie led us into the small, pretty town and to a market where we bought slices of pizza, focaccia, and some apples.  We found a small park that offered benches situated around a pretty fountain and sat for lunch.

During our snack, we chatted with a Russian gentleman who was traveling because his mistress had kicked him out.  Anatoly was drinking wine from a box and tried to impress us with his list of American famous names that he knew.  He dabbled in political talk a bit, then took a photo for us.  Humorous!

We boarded the train for Milan and sat with Marie and an Algerian named Mahtook (sounds kind of like some Klingon name... no joke).  The Algerian spoke much French, some Portuguese, and a little German with me.  Marie did her best with French and English.  Jeanette even tried some with her Spanish.  It was a multicultural voyage for sure.  I chatted with Marie and Mahtook in French for a bit, then tried to allow Jeanette and Marie to sleep (we were on hour 8 or so of our voyage).  Mahtook wanted to keep chatting, though, and kept me awake, speaking of politics and the view of the US from the outside world.  Let's just say that George Bush doesn't impress too many people out there.

Marie left us before Milan and we expressed our gratitude for all of her help.  In Milan, the timing of the trains forced us to hoof it for the next train to Bologna.  People were in a hurry on the train, including a middle-aged woman who was trying to get us to yell at a nun and priest to get out of the way.  We sat in a car with a nice Italian grandmother and granddaughter who shared some of our snacks that we purchased on the train (Pringles).  We arrived in Bologna at about 7:30 PM and found that we could take a bus from the train station to the airport for something like 9€ total.

At the airport, I had no trouble getting the car (Thrifty of all things) while Jeanette sat down at a wine bar and had some samples.  We bought panini sandwiches in the airport to devour in the car... they turned out to be fantastic.  Warm cheeses, good salami, mmmm.  Then we drove in the rain to Florence.

Finally arriving in Florence, it didn't seem like much until we finally found the historic area.  We checked out a couple of hotels, settling on the Hotel Amelie with a gorgeous 20'+ high ceiling-ed room and loads of pretty antiques, including the tiny elevator (around 80€/night).  We settled in for the night after I found someplace legal to park the car... and crashed out after a very long day.