A Bird in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush

Well I’ll start off by saying I’m definitely not disappointed with today…however things could have gone better. We arrived in Nice yesterday and today we set out for the beach. The hostel we’re staying at right now is a ways away from the coast so it takes a long time to get to anywhere where you can see the Mediterranean. We hear about a great beach a little ways from Nice at Cape d’Ail, so that’s where we headed first. It took forever to actually get into Nice to take the bus to the beach so we didn’t end up getting to Cape d’Ail until around 1 pm. And even once we got off the bus it took about 20 minutes to walk down the winding streets to the little cove where the beach, called Plaga Mala, was located. The area was very pretty but not as good as advertised by some others (it was still pretty awesome don’t get me wrong). We were there for probably 2 or 3 hours…then we saw a guy who had arrived at the hostel the same time as us yesterday and he told us we should go to Monaco because the beach there was awesome and so much better…so we went. Well Monaco was a little bit of a nightmare. The city is built for driving, not for walking…which I suppose is why their Grand Prix is such a big deal. It took forever to get to the beach, which is cool but no better than where we were before. We got back to Nice around 7:30 pm or so and were exhausted from all the run around…what we should’ve done, instead of hunting for beaches outside of Nice, is just stay put and be content. Nice is a very cool city and we wish we had more time here to take it all in. Tonight we grabbed a pizza from a take-away stand and headed to the beach where we ate our pizza on a bench. After that Erica got an ice cream cone and I had my last French crepe, this time cinnamon…which, by the way, was fantastic!

270 Euros…I don’t think so.

God is good. It just took us a while to realize this today. Last night when looking for trains out of Paris to Munich the 11:24 am appeared to be full but the 3:24 pm was not. So we planned on taking our time this morning getting ready, heading to the train station at some point to make sure we had seats for the 3:24…only to find out, unbeknownst to us, it is the busiest weekend of the year for the entire country of France. It really didn’t help that the guy at the ticket desk was your stereotypical, rude Frenchman. That’s not to say all are, in fact, he was the only unpleasant French person we encountered our entire trip. He insisted on “no bookings out of France…not today, not tomorrow, not Saturday, not Sunday” as he muttered what I can only imagine were French expletives under his breath. And not just to Munich, but no train at all was possible…according to this man we were stuck in Paris with no place to stay unless we paid the unpleasant fee of 270 euros for 1st class tickets even with our previously purchased EURail Passes. Well, at this point we had no choice; we already have the next week of our trip planned and didn’t want to be stuck so we paid. When we returned to Cecilia’s to get ready to leave Paris we told her of our unfortunate situation. Her and her husband insisted that this wasn’t right and that we should pursue the matter further, but still our departure was only a couple hours away and we’d already paid for the tickets. So we took the metro and walked to the Gare de l’Est, which in itself was a task because as I’ve stated before European street signs are awful. We approached the first counter we saw in the train station and Erica simply said to the people there “English?” hoping for a response. The women at the desk quickly replied “yes” and so we explained our situation to them, they quickly let us know what happened was not correct. One of the women marched me straight to the ticket desk and fixed the matter immediately…full refund…only a 5 euro seat fee per person. Our prayers were answered….praise the Lord.

A couple of side notes: 5:35 pm (local time here), officially in Germany...my first trip to the land of the majority of my heritage, 3/8 German. I’m the epitome of European mutt: German, Swedish, Irish, English, and French. On this trip I’m crossing all but Sweden off that list, pretty cool I think. Oh and there’s a cute little Indian girl in the seat across the aisle from me, I think she’s sleeping with her eyes open…really creeping me out.

9:05 pm, almost to Munich. Funny how we almost had to pay 270 Euros for the high demand seats here; and now we literally have an entire area of 16 seats to ourselves.

Gute nacht.