Our Last Day in France
I thought you might enjoy hearing about our last day in France since
it started out so beautifully and ended in such chaos. I was reminded
of it when I transcribed my diary. We laugh about it each time we
tell the story. We decided to stay in St. Laurent du Var, the little
town where the hotel was located and do a bit of exploring on our
last day, we had been too busy rushing off to Cannes, and the little
towns in Provence to see our own part of the Riviera. We walked the
promenade, the beach is too rocky, but the town has a wonderful
Riviera Coastline, which we had been too busy to discover, also,
today was the first wonderful day weatherwise.
The coast is lined with little cafes. We sat and drank Perrier and
soaked up the last of the French sunshine. The Herald-Trib says it
will be 35 degrees in Minnesota tomorrow. Yuk.
About 3:00pm we decided to get a cab to take us to the station and
catch the train for Nice. After arriving, we spent twenty minutes
hunting before we found the locker section at the Nice la Gare and
then we had to figure out the magic lock formula. Finally we got our
luggage stowed and had time to explore the city. It was very busy on
this Easter Holiday. We ended up having dinner in a Chinese cafeteria
since we were too late for lunch and too early for a real French
dinner. After dinner we returned to the station to wait for our train
to Paris and then began our evening from hell. When we tried to
extract our luggage one of our lockers wouldn't open and we had to
get help, then the train was late and when it finally did arrive we
got on the wrong car and had to haul our baggage endlessly through
car after car with aisles so narrow that we could hardly get by and
doors that wouldn't stay open, then Stan's overstuffed backpack
unzipped and there I was picking up our Picasso plates and schlepping
loose luggage over boxes, finally with the help of the porters we
reached our little couchette and were able to relax. Fortunately
the plates didn't break. We slept amazingly well and were ready for
the morning's battles. First there was the metro. At 8:30 am the
Paris metro is a mass of pushing, shoving, humanity, trying to get to
work. Once we mastered the first leg the transfer to the airport
metro was easy, not so many people going to the airport. We picked
up a baguette at the airport station and then caught the wrong
shuttle to the Northwest ticket counter, finally got on the correct
one, found Northwest, went through security, got some coffee to have
with our baguette and leftover cheese and jelly from yesterday's
hotel brunch. We thought our trials were over until we found out that
they didn't like our boarding pass so we were handed from person to
person until it was straightened out. At last we got on board and
discovered that my luggage handle was missing a screw, and of course
by then most of the overhead lockers were full and we had the usual
difficult time stowing everything. At last everything was stashed
away and we were able to try to get comfortable in our cramped little
seats and wait for lunch.
The rest of the journey was a breeze.
Jane
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