Trains, Taxis, and Tourists

For our last day (half day really) in Nice, we woke up early and headed to the beach in our toe shoes. (If you don't know what these are, look them up, they are great: fibramfivefingers.com). We picked up beach glass for about an hour then took some pictures. Got some great pieces and started our collection for our store!

After the beach, we headed back to the hostel where we packed up our clothes in order to be checked out by 10:30 - then we put our bags in storage while we roamed the city one last time. We headed through a shopping district, bunches of small stores, and ended up at our Creperie for lunch. We continued to walk around following lunch, but were unsuccessful finding the old Jewish ghetto - we looked it up later and found we had walked right around it! Bummer!

After a stop through some more shops, we hopped on the tram and got some snacks for the train from our favorite little shop, we had toasted panini sandwiches, so delicious. Next, we headed to the internet cafe to write a blog and upload some pictures and videos for you all.

Note: It is difficult at times to post because we want to be doing things rather than typing, which each post takes generally over an hour, so we appreciate your patience!

Continuing with the story...

We finished in just enough time to grab our bags and head to the train station, thank goodness it was only 300 meters from our hostel cause our bags were heavy!! We wanted to try to switch our tickets but had no luck :( -- to clarify, we wanted to switch the tickets from TGV to Thalys because it is a better train with better service. (This ended up causing a problem later...)

Our train was delayed about ten minutes for departure so it made us a little nervous as we only had half an hour to switch trains at Marsielle (sp?). The train ride was OK, but there was a very talk-a-tive Chinese girl in front of us. She literally talked the entire 2 hours. I thought she was talking on the phone but turns out she was talking to the girl next to her! The other girlsaid MAYBE 50 words. MAYBE. (She was a loud talker, this is why it was a problem)

Anyway, got to our train fine but it ended up deing delayed for about an hour because of some problem - not sure what happened b/c we couldn't understand the French PA announcements. (Not fun - I always have a sympathy for travelers in American if they don't know English, it sucks not knowing what is going on). Then we finally got on the road and we were moving at a glacial speed. We ended stopped AGAIN in the middle of no-where for about 45 min. Definitely wishing we would have switched our tickets at this point. We finally got moving at high speed but arrived in Paris about an hour and a half late.

In order to get to our hostel in the easiest way and wiht the least amount of stress, we took a taxi. The taxi driver didn't speak English. Good thing I had the address and cross streets written down on a piece of paper. Seriously good thing. It seemed liked we were driving forever before we finally arrived. Our hostel looked really nice fromthe outside and it was very nice inside. Unfortunately, there is also a restaurant/bar right next to the registration desk... not the best arrangement. It was about midnight at this point, we were exhausted and hungry - loud noises and American tourists were not what we wanted to see.

We eventually got into our room, which was very lovely, but no toilet (only 5 steps away down the hall, no big deal). The hostel is completely filled, I think there are over 300 rooms! When we got arranged, we passed out pretty quickly! Had to be prepared for our first day in Paris!

Sorry about the short post -- will write more about culture and details later.

Take care! Love to all,

Lauren and Julie