Long Day...

Now I'll blog about the longest day of the whole adventure. We got up at 5:30 on Aug 25 to catch the 6:07 train to Monterosso (the fifth village in Cinque Terre, north of Vernazza). We waited in Monterosso until 6:55 to catch the train from Monterosso to Genoa. Upon arriving in Genoa at 8:20, we picked up some breakfast in the train station before catching a train to Ventimiglia (silent g in Ventimiglia) at 8:45. We arrived in Ventimiglia just after 11 am and waited for our next train to leave Ventimiglia for Montecarlo (in France) at 11:31. We arrived in Montecarlo at noon and jumped off one train onto another (fortunately on the next platform), this time heading for Nice, pm. at 12:08. We arrived in Nice finally at 12:36, where we wandered around the harbourfront watching parachutists fly into the air behind a boat. Then we meandered back through the Old Town, where we picked up lunch at a little cafe. We saw lots of palm trees and sand in Nice. After two-and-a-half hours, there we headed back towards the train station for our 4:28 train ride to Marseille. We arrived in Marseille around 7 pm where we needed to wait for our 8:45 departure to Avignon. I sat with the luggage, while Karen got up and took pictures around the station and surrounding vicinity. We got to Avignon at 10:15 pm rather tired. We found our hotel at 10:25, but the hotel had no record of our reservation...so we got the smallest, least desirable room in the place--or maybe they were all that bad...I don't know. It was a hot, airless room with only a small fan, and the bed wasn't a proper double. You get what you pay for!