And you’re… well, not quite out of France. But almost!
As I mentioned last post I was gearing up for a three day travel marathon that I am proud to say I’ve completed safe and sound. It wasn’t even all that bad. I’m a little tired, but not cranky or dying or anything. I think it’s worth documenting though, so I guess here it goes!
The overnight train out of Lisbon was about as eventful as the overnight train in. I arrived in Hendaye just inside the French border right on time at 11:30am. It was travel in France, however, that once again proved exciting, or at least not run of the mill.
You see, I don’t know if it’s made it to the North American news circuit, but it’s a big deal in Europe, and the European traveling community especially, that French rail workers have been on strike for a while now, as many of the French often are. That basically means chaos for anyone taking the train in France, which I was doing.
I actually got lucky. You see, the train I wanted to be on, the one that left right after my first one arrived, was cancelled, resulting in a hall full of stranded passengers waiting in endless lines for the few remaining rail workers to help them. I stayed out of it. The board claimed my train was still coming, albeit not for sox hours, and the waiting room off of the hall was much quieter and less headache inducing than being anywhere near that line. Just before one, however, a haggard looking young woman in a rail uniform poked her head into the waiting room to make sure “no one wanted to take the bus.”
What bus?
Well, I asked, and she didn’t speak great English, but it sounded like there was a bus headed for Paris at that very moment, and the wheels in my head started turning. You see, I was looking at pulling an all-nighter on the Paris metro because I couldn’t get a hostel in Paris, and the reason I couldn’t get a hostel in Paris was because none of the affordable ones would take me after ten o’clock. But if I could get in earlier… Sure, my train hadn’t been cancelled, but it looked like they had room on the bus, and it was free.
So I gathered up my belongings and hurried out to check. Turns out no. The bus was not going to Paris, just another station that had an earlier train to Paris. When did it get in though? A little less than an hour before my train, which still put it at past 10:30. I sighed and thanked the woman and went back to my seat.
I had stocked up in Lisbon on food for the trip. Rice cakes, tomatoes, and a bunch of perfectly ripe cherries. They held me over for most of the day, but about an hour before my train was do I expected I would be getting hungry soon, and at that point my legs could do with a stretch, so I hoisted my bag onto my back and went slogging through the nearby streets of Hendaye to find… nothing. I could see the actual city in the distance, on the complete other side of the station, but hadn’t the time to make it there and back. The only establishments in the vicinity were a dingy looking bar and two cafes selling overpriced ham sandwiches, so I returned to the station to buy a pack of cookies from the newsstand. Not exactly sustenance, but I hoped they’d hold me over.
When the train finally came, I was surprised to note how empty it was. I guess I wasn’t the only person who thought the bus was a good idea. I had the urge to get off at Bordeaux, the station from which I’d originally wanted to connect to Nice, but decided not to try my luck as long as I had other reservations. That meant riding the whole five hours to Paris, and conveniently finishing my novel set in the city along the way. It’s always nice to read about cities you’re in or going to. Being part of the lives of people who live there, even fictional ones, has a way of connecting you.
Once at the Paris station I quickly found a bench and decided to settle in. There were other travelers, like me, clearly planning to stay the night, but most of my fellow bench sitters were homeless men and women looking to get out of the cold. This surprised me at first. I had done my research and knew the station closed at 1:15. My plan was to sit around until then, hope on the metro that conveniently doesn’t close on Saturdays, and ride it until my departure station opened up at 3:30. In the wake of my novel reading, I was already starting to rethink this plan, but with so many people gathering with so little time left, I wondered if maybe they knew something I didn’t.
What they knew, it turns out, is that ‘close’ is a loose term. They definitely stopped letting people up to the platforms, but they definitely didn’t kick anyone out either, a fact evidenced by nothing so much as the constant stream of spectacular music coming from the public piano.
You see… that’s a thing I will say I love about Paris. Many of the train stations have pianos just sitting around for anyone to play, and the one in Montparnasse that Saturday night had been taken over by a large group of musically inclined friends with a video camera. They were belting show tunes like there was no tomorrow: RENT, Smash, Funny Girl, We Will Rock You, and so on and so forth. I moved a couple times to get a better view because they seemed to have dance routines too, and though it clearly annoyed many of the people trying to sleep, I couldn’t stop grinning. Long or not, it certainly made my night.
When they moved from the piano to start singing with the guitar, I decided it was time to move on. It was hard to hear them, and I was well past the departure time I had decided on in recalibrated my overnight plan. You see, it was the summer solstice, the shortest night of the year, and the last one that would occur on a Saturday. Spending that on the metro seemed like a waste. Clearly I wasn’t going to go out and join any parties with my backpack on, but I did want to see if there was anything going on, and I hadn’t had the chance to explore that part of Paris the first time I was there.
So I strapped on my backpack and geared up for the five and a half kilometer trek across the city to the next station. And I’m glad I did. Even at three in the morning, Paris was still going strong. It wasn’t every street, of course, but when you hit a crowd it was a crowd. People from all walks of life, stumbling around on a sea of broken glass, buying crepes and candy and ice cream, setting off fireworks in some places. And I’m not exaggerating about the glass. It was late enough that some of the city cleaners had come out to start sweeping it up, but you couldn’t go two feet in the busy areas without stepping on shards of a beer or wine bottle. I was glad I was wearing good shoes.
Other than the trash, I think I like Paris at night. There was a sort of life to it that wasn’t as deviant as what I’ve seen elsewhere. Yes, you had your drunk kids stumbling home from the clubs, but you also had cafes full of people deep in conversation, friends sitting along the Seine just looking over the water. It was lovely, all in all, and I wish I could have found a safe way to experience while I was here longer.
It took a little more than an hour, and of course a bit of attention over my giant bag, to get to the train station, but get there I did. To my pleasant surprise, there was someone playing a public piano there as well, so I bought a tiny cappuccino from on of the automatic machines they have in every station and settled in to listen again. I had about four hours to go, which saw me reading, people watching, and buying a spot of breakfast when the cafes opened.
I debated with myself about trying to change my train ticket to an earlier time. The Spanish man who had booked it had just picked one at random, assuming I would get a hotel in Paris, and it turned out there were two trains to the same city that left even earlier. I would have had to pay the reservation fee again though, and the reservation I had was for first class. That might have caught me up, considering my rail pass is only valid for second, but with the strike I figured they’d stopped checking tickets on trains altogether, and to be honest… I was curious to see how the other half lived.
Well, they did check my ticket, but if the conductor noticed the discrepancy, he didn’t so much as give it a second look, which is more than I can say for the proper French ladies sitting in a little clump one row up who kept giving me suspicious sideways glances. What can I say, by this point I hadn’t showered in a couple days. I probably would have been giving myself suspicious glances too.
Anyway, first class wasn’t all that much different from second class. The seats were a little bigger, there was an electrical plug, and the clientele were a bit better dressed. Beyond that? Nada. Anyway, it was a good chance to nap seeing as I’d been up all night, so I did that more or less all the way to to Marseille.
My layover in Marseille was a negligible half an hour in which I grabbed a bit of lunch to eat on the train; my first, as it were, unreserved train. Well, it turns out there are downsides that come with not having to make a reservation. Namely, massive crowding in rather older accommodations. Those accommodations, however, were in what I like to call Hogwarts style: compartments set along a single hallway. So I was excited. Luckily, I got on as soon as the platform was announced, so I had a nice window seat and plenty of luggage space. And then came the hoards.
I ended up with a full compartment. Eight people from three continents divided among five parties squeezing into not nearly enough space when you accounted for luggage. But everyone was friendly enough about moving and shifting and reorganizing, even if it had to be done multilingually. It was actually a much more intimate travel experience. Not that I spoke with everyone, but compartments make you share space with everyone, not just your neighbor.
Despite the possible downsides though, I should mention the major upside. No reservation means I didn’t have to pay a reservation fee, making all possible downsides irrelevant. I actually have a lot of these trains coming up in my future, so I should probably try to get used to it. If all the views are like the one to Nice though, I don’t think I’ll be having any problems.
In case you weren’t aware, Nice is part of the Cote d’Azure, commonly known as the French Riviera in English. As the train darted along, swaying this way and that, I was greeted on the left by lush green mountains and on the right by glistening blue seas. I’m still not entirely sure it was real. I have never seen water so blue in my life. And yet… this is the view from outside my hostel.
Before I depart for a seaside adventure though, I would just like to call attention to the title, which I thought was rather clever considering the French train strike and the number of times I ran into the number three. I was on trains for 24 hours (divisible by three) over the course of 39 hours (also divisible by three) spread across three days (given). The trip was split into three legs in which I crossed through three countries. The lengths of my layovers were always divisible by three. By coincidence, I left for my nighttime walk across Paris at 3am. And there are probably a bunch of other threes I’m missing too. So, three. It is the perfect number you know.
As I mentioned last post I was gearing up for a three day travel marathon that I am proud to say I’ve completed safe and sound. It wasn’t even all that bad. I’m a little tired, but not cranky or dying or anything. I think it’s worth documenting though, so I guess here it goes!
The overnight train out of Lisbon was about as eventful as the overnight train in. I arrived in Hendaye just inside the French border right on time at 11:30am. It was travel in France, however, that once again proved exciting, or at least not run of the mill.
You see, I don’t know if it’s made it to the North American news circuit, but it’s a big deal in Europe, and the European traveling community especially, that French rail workers have been on strike for a while now, as many of the French often are. That basically means chaos for anyone taking the train in France, which I was doing.
I actually got lucky. You see, the train I wanted to be on, the one that left right after my first one arrived, was cancelled, resulting in a hall full of stranded passengers waiting in endless lines for the few remaining rail workers to help them. I stayed out of it. The board claimed my train was still coming, albeit not for sox hours, and the waiting room off of the hall was much quieter and less headache inducing than being anywhere near that line. Just before one, however, a haggard looking young woman in a rail uniform poked her head into the waiting room to make sure “no one wanted to take the bus.”
What bus?
Well, I asked, and she didn’t speak great English, but it sounded like there was a bus headed for Paris at that very moment, and the wheels in my head started turning. You see, I was looking at pulling an all-nighter on the Paris metro because I couldn’t get a hostel in Paris, and the reason I couldn’t get a hostel in Paris was because none of the affordable ones would take me after ten o’clock. But if I could get in earlier… Sure, my train hadn’t been cancelled, but it looked like they had room on the bus, and it was free.
So I gathered up my belongings and hurried out to check. Turns out no. The bus was not going to Paris, just another station that had an earlier train to Paris. When did it get in though? A little less than an hour before my train, which still put it at past 10:30. I sighed and thanked the woman and went back to my seat.
I had stocked up in Lisbon on food for the trip. Rice cakes, tomatoes, and a bunch of perfectly ripe cherries. They held me over for most of the day, but about an hour before my train was do I expected I would be getting hungry soon, and at that point my legs could do with a stretch, so I hoisted my bag onto my back and went slogging through the nearby streets of Hendaye to find… nothing. I could see the actual city in the distance, on the complete other side of the station, but hadn’t the time to make it there and back. The only establishments in the vicinity were a dingy looking bar and two cafes selling overpriced ham sandwiches, so I returned to the station to buy a pack of cookies from the newsstand. Not exactly sustenance, but I hoped they’d hold me over.
When the train finally came, I was surprised to note how empty it was. I guess I wasn’t the only person who thought the bus was a good idea. I had the urge to get off at Bordeaux, the station from which I’d originally wanted to connect to Nice, but decided not to try my luck as long as I had other reservations. That meant riding the whole five hours to Paris, and conveniently finishing my novel set in the city along the way. It’s always nice to read about cities you’re in or going to. Being part of the lives of people who live there, even fictional ones, has a way of connecting you.
Once at the Paris station I quickly found a bench and decided to settle in. There were other travelers, like me, clearly planning to stay the night, but most of my fellow bench sitters were homeless men and women looking to get out of the cold. This surprised me at first. I had done my research and knew the station closed at 1:15. My plan was to sit around until then, hope on the metro that conveniently doesn’t close on Saturdays, and ride it until my departure station opened up at 3:30. In the wake of my novel reading, I was already starting to rethink this plan, but with so many people gathering with so little time left, I wondered if maybe they knew something I didn’t.
What they knew, it turns out, is that ‘close’ is a loose term. They definitely stopped letting people up to the platforms, but they definitely didn’t kick anyone out either, a fact evidenced by nothing so much as the constant stream of spectacular music coming from the public piano.
You see… that’s a thing I will say I love about Paris. Many of the train stations have pianos just sitting around for anyone to play, and the one in Montparnasse that Saturday night had been taken over by a large group of musically inclined friends with a video camera. They were belting show tunes like there was no tomorrow: RENT, Smash, Funny Girl, We Will Rock You, and so on and so forth. I moved a couple times to get a better view because they seemed to have dance routines too, and though it clearly annoyed many of the people trying to sleep, I couldn’t stop grinning. Long or not, it certainly made my night.
When they moved from the piano to start singing with the guitar, I decided it was time to move on. It was hard to hear them, and I was well past the departure time I had decided on in recalibrated my overnight plan. You see, it was the summer solstice, the shortest night of the year, and the last one that would occur on a Saturday. Spending that on the metro seemed like a waste. Clearly I wasn’t going to go out and join any parties with my backpack on, but I did want to see if there was anything going on, and I hadn’t had the chance to explore that part of Paris the first time I was there.
So I strapped on my backpack and geared up for the five and a half kilometer trek across the city to the next station. And I’m glad I did. Even at three in the morning, Paris was still going strong. It wasn’t every street, of course, but when you hit a crowd it was a crowd. People from all walks of life, stumbling around on a sea of broken glass, buying crepes and candy and ice cream, setting off fireworks in some places. And I’m not exaggerating about the glass. It was late enough that some of the city cleaners had come out to start sweeping it up, but you couldn’t go two feet in the busy areas without stepping on shards of a beer or wine bottle. I was glad I was wearing good shoes.
Other than the trash, I think I like Paris at night. There was a sort of life to it that wasn’t as deviant as what I’ve seen elsewhere. Yes, you had your drunk kids stumbling home from the clubs, but you also had cafes full of people deep in conversation, friends sitting along the Seine just looking over the water. It was lovely, all in all, and I wish I could have found a safe way to experience while I was here longer.
It took a little more than an hour, and of course a bit of attention over my giant bag, to get to the train station, but get there I did. To my pleasant surprise, there was someone playing a public piano there as well, so I bought a tiny cappuccino from on of the automatic machines they have in every station and settled in to listen again. I had about four hours to go, which saw me reading, people watching, and buying a spot of breakfast when the cafes opened.
I debated with myself about trying to change my train ticket to an earlier time. The Spanish man who had booked it had just picked one at random, assuming I would get a hotel in Paris, and it turned out there were two trains to the same city that left even earlier. I would have had to pay the reservation fee again though, and the reservation I had was for first class. That might have caught me up, considering my rail pass is only valid for second, but with the strike I figured they’d stopped checking tickets on trains altogether, and to be honest… I was curious to see how the other half lived.
Well, they did check my ticket, but if the conductor noticed the discrepancy, he didn’t so much as give it a second look, which is more than I can say for the proper French ladies sitting in a little clump one row up who kept giving me suspicious sideways glances. What can I say, by this point I hadn’t showered in a couple days. I probably would have been giving myself suspicious glances too.
Anyway, first class wasn’t all that much different from second class. The seats were a little bigger, there was an electrical plug, and the clientele were a bit better dressed. Beyond that? Nada. Anyway, it was a good chance to nap seeing as I’d been up all night, so I did that more or less all the way to to Marseille.
My layover in Marseille was a negligible half an hour in which I grabbed a bit of lunch to eat on the train; my first, as it were, unreserved train. Well, it turns out there are downsides that come with not having to make a reservation. Namely, massive crowding in rather older accommodations. Those accommodations, however, were in what I like to call Hogwarts style: compartments set along a single hallway. So I was excited. Luckily, I got on as soon as the platform was announced, so I had a nice window seat and plenty of luggage space. And then came the hoards.
I ended up with a full compartment. Eight people from three continents divided among five parties squeezing into not nearly enough space when you accounted for luggage. But everyone was friendly enough about moving and shifting and reorganizing, even if it had to be done multilingually. It was actually a much more intimate travel experience. Not that I spoke with everyone, but compartments make you share space with everyone, not just your neighbor.
Despite the possible downsides though, I should mention the major upside. No reservation means I didn’t have to pay a reservation fee, making all possible downsides irrelevant. I actually have a lot of these trains coming up in my future, so I should probably try to get used to it. If all the views are like the one to Nice though, I don’t think I’ll be having any problems.
In case you weren’t aware, Nice is part of the Cote d’Azure, commonly known as the French Riviera in English. As the train darted along, swaying this way and that, I was greeted on the left by lush green mountains and on the right by glistening blue seas. I’m still not entirely sure it was real. I have never seen water so blue in my life. And yet… this is the view from outside my hostel.
(The beach is like... a hundred yards away, if you can't tell.)
Before I depart for a seaside adventure though, I would just like to call attention to the title, which I thought was rather clever considering the French train strike and the number of times I ran into the number three. I was on trains for 24 hours (divisible by three) over the course of 39 hours (also divisible by three) spread across three days (given). The trip was split into three legs in which I crossed through three countries. The lengths of my layovers were always divisible by three. By coincidence, I left for my nighttime walk across Paris at 3am. And there are probably a bunch of other threes I’m missing too. So, three. It is the perfect number you know.
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