My Trip to France and Italy, Day 4 and 5

Here's where we stayed that night. The Comfort Inn Hotel. We're off to the airport again.

Here's Jacqui calling home to find out the flight information for Trish and Sara's flight. This information would indeed be useful.

Back at the airport, and it's finally all 7 of us: Mindy, Becky, Maryrose, Jacqui, Sara, Trish, and me.

And we stop, cause we don't really know where we're going.

So we make it to the trains, and now Mindy tries to figure out where we should be heading.

So... Jacqui didn't think I was going to take that picture... then didn't think I was going to save it.. and prolly didn't think I was going to post in on the internet for the whole world to see. 3 strikes. Behind her is Trish, and to the left is Sara. We're now on the train.. to the North Station, I think.

Here's a shot of Sara. All of the girls on the trip ended up being quite kewl.

Becky and Mindy, checking out their cameras.

And here's the fearsome foursome: Becky, Mindy, Maryrose, and Me. The four of us were together the entire time of my 2 weeks, and we were joined by Jacqui, Sara, and Trish in most of the major cities. (Paris, Milan, and Florence).

Here's a quick clip of the French countryside as we're going along on the Train. we're heading towards Lyon now, I believe.

Jacqui, Sara, and Trish, either sleeping or just about sleeping.

Here's a shot of the French countryside from the train to Lyon.

Here's a little better clip of the countryside from the train to Lyon.

Here's a shot at some apartments and taller buildings off in the distance. We're still on the train from Paris to Lyon.

Here's the train we were riding on. We're in Lyon now... and would be for a while.

We're headed to the staion/information dealie now. I was reminded that backpacks kinda suck.

We're in Lyon, and because of the strike, we had no train for a while. So we're in this Irish pub, having drinks. Jacqui and I got Labatts, and it was really, really warm, which wasn't that kewl... eventually we got a glass of ice (I wouldn't find out until later just how rare and special that glass of ice was). The effort we then put forth to chill our beer without diluting it occupied our attentions for quite some time. Off in the background [upper right], a protest is taking place.

You can kind of see it in the street back there. There's a parade of protesters from the Train strike marching and shouting back there.

Maryrose, Mindy, and I went looking for an Internet cafe, and eventually found this place. it was filled with French speaking Asian kids playing Counterstike. they seemed quite pleased that I could identify what game they were playing.

Eventually we got on a train to Marseilles, France. We started seeing more mountainous surroundings, and I was jazzed, because mountains are beautiful.

The hope was that any time we found a train getting us closer to where we wanted to be (Milan, Italy) we'd take the train... and you never knew if the train on the board was actually going to show up or not.

And we're in Marseilles. We decided to spend the night here, and then take the train that left at 6:00ish in the morning the next morning to get to Milan, assuming it actually was there. This is a shot of the town from the train station.

Here's another shot of the town, just down the steps from the station. The town itself looked pretty nice and quaint, but walking around it, it was pretty dirty, the people all seemed really sketchy, and you just got that "this isn't a good place to be for long" feeling wherever you went. We may have just been in a bad part of town, but other travelers we talked to throughout the trip had similar impressions of Marseilles.

Here's a cathedral in Marseilles. We walked around for a while to see the town, and this was really the only thing of any real interest to us.

If you can read it, those green cans say "Ron Ron". It's a type of cat food I guess.

Here we are, on the train to Nice. (we're getting closer to Milan...), and everyone is asleep.

And here we see the Mediterranean Sea for the first time.

More shots of the Sea. It looked "inviting".

We made it to the train station in Nice, but the train to Milan wasn't leaving for a number of hours, so we had some time to kill.

We decided to have some lunch, and as we headed to the restaurant we met up with this guy that we had talked to in the train station (He was trying to get into Italy as well, and had faced similar frustrations. His name was David, and we invited him to join us for lunch.He's there on the right between Trish and Sara. On the far right you can see Sara drinking her drink... She wanted an "appetizer" and ended up with an "aperitif", which is a pre-dinner [alcoholic] beverage. It was good, but not quite what she expected.

After lunch, we [along with David] decided to head off and find the beach.

We're still walking towards the beach. Here's another shot of the city, including tons of cars parallel parked, scooters zipping along, and a sex shop right in the middle of your average city block.

And we found the beach. It was beautiful there. And you can stop your squinting, I think I avoided all the topless sunbathers with this shot.

Trish and Jacqui standing in the sea. The beach was all stones, not sand. It wasn't horribly uncomfortable.... but it was notivceably not sand...

Becky, Maryrose, and Mindy, in the sea.

More fun in the sea.

David took this shot of the full group of 7 hanging out on the beach in Nice. Left to right: Me, Sarah, Trish, Jacqui, Maryrose, Becky, and Mindy.

Here's a clip of the Nice train station.

Here we are, back at the Nice train station, waiting for the train to Milan to arrive... very hopefully that it will actually arrive.

We made in on the train to Milan. Here's a shot out the window of the train back to the sea. There's some graphitti scratched into the window.

I'm sitting by Jacqui on the train. Behind us is David. To the left, you can kinda see the middle aged black man playing the guitar. He played Suzanne Vega's Luca and Abbs's Dancing Queen... two very odd choices for an middle aged black man on the way to Milan to play on the train... but I will say he was quite good, and I gave him some money.

More shots of mountains, now as we enter into Italy.

Another shot of the mountains/forrests on the way to Milan.

This... is a tunnel. This is not what I was trying to take a picture of at all.

A clip of the mountains as we're riding on the train to Milan.

So... I didn't do such a swell job with the sunscreen while on the beach in Nice, and it's starting to get pretty noticeable. My legs were really burned, except for a few long streaks, where I had apparently applied enough sunscreen to block out the sun completely. So my legs were red with white stripes, and they looked rediculous. The girls found the entire thing quite mockable. Girls can be cruel.

Here's Becky, writing in her journal on the train. She and I seemed to write quite a bit... and towards the end I noticed Maryrose writing quite a bit as well.

Here's the train station in Milan. It's late at night, and we're looking for a hotel to stay for the night.

Here's Becky and my hotel room. There was a sink a few feet from my head... just sitting there in the room. It was kinda weird.

The beds were really small, but the pillows were really big.

Here's the balcony of Maryrose and Mindy's room.. Yeah.. they got a balcony. But I think they only had one bed, too.

I got pretty burned on the beach, I guess, cause I was really red, and my face was on fire. I tried to keep tabs on the growth of my beard as well, as I'd never grown a full beard before.