Porquerolles

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We leave Nice and head south to an island called Porquerolles. We take tram two then tram one to get to the train station Nice Ville. The train takes us to Toulon. In Toulon we take a train to Hyers. In Hyers we take a taxi to the port at Tour Fondue. At the port we take a ferry to Porquerolles. The island town is small, we walk to our hotel which is five rooms above a restaurant. We spend two nights here. The room is small, there are ants n the room and I wonder when the last time the hard wood floors were cleaned. I wear my flappers when in the room. All this for $250 per night. So not worth it. The town square is surrounded by restaurants and shops. We have sea bass for lunch, you know the whole fish with head and tail. The internet does not work in our room so we go downstairs and sit in front of the hotel office when we want to connect to the internet. We get an email from the SNCF (French train) saying they think they have our bag. Yea, good news. Bad news we must pay 10 euros and go back to Nice to claim it. We just left Nice. We try to book tickets back to Nice for the next day but they are doing maintenance on the line and no trains are going to Nice. We will have to go on Sunday. The things to do on this island are ride bikes, walk and eat. After spending so much time trying to plan a way back to Nice we just decided to walk around the island. We have grilled beef served with grilled bone marrow for dinner served with risotto. Mark does not want to eat the marrow so I scrap the marrow out of both our bones and put it on the steak. It tastes like fat which I like. After dinner we find a bocce ball set in the hotel. We buy a bottle of wine and play bocce ball in the town square. There are four other groups playing bocce. The island is supposed to be car free but the locals all have cars only the tourist have no cars. We have been on car free islands before that we really enjoyed, The island has multiple gelato shops and we indulge. Rum raisin in my current favorite flavor. We find the only boulangerie on the island and we enjoy raisin and chocolate croissants for breakfast before heading to the ferry. We are off the Avignon but sadly don’t make it. The train station is crowded and the train was 59 minutes late. When the train pulls in to Avignon a guy with his bags blocks the row and by the time he gets out of the way the train has pulled away. Our luck the next stop is not for three hours and we are headed to Paris. We book a room at a hotel 300 feet from the train station in Paris. The hotel is nice and we take showers and go to bed. So as I type this I am on a train from Paris back to Nice. We know this trip back to Nice may be a waste of time. We have no way of knowing if they have our passports but we are willing to kill a day to find out. Bye for now.

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