Provence

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Hey, this place is pretty sweet....too bad we have to leave!

We had planned to spend a few days hanging out in Provence before moving on to Italy. Our timing was a little off though. We were landing in France a day before a massive strike by the rail workers. The media was warning that this was not going to be one of their 'usual' strikes, and was going to hit the entire country.

We arrived in the little town of Arles, France in the late evening due to our little hiccup that made us go to the Barcelona hospital. We didn't have a place to stay, and ended up wandering around for close to an hour before we found a fantastic hotel in the middle of town. We barely had time to enjoy the room...we had to head out quickly to find a restaurant that was still serving. After a late meal we crashed back in the room. We couldn't sleep in though, as we were catching an early train heading East. We did take a few minutes to grab some croissants at a bakery on the way to the station....best ones I've ever tasted.

We spent the whole day riding the local trains eastward, staying on each one to its farthest stop. We were trying to get to Italy before 8:00pm, when the French rail system would shut down. As we got closer and closer to the deadline, the train stations became a crazy mess. No one really knew when the next train would arrive, if it had any room on it, and where it would stop. Crowds of people would stand on the platform only to watch a full train pass by without stopping.

We made it out of the country with thirty minutes to spare. What a relief to get out.. The whole slog made us tired, grumpy and wanting a decent place to stay.....

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Photos

Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge
Andrew was diagnosed in Barcelona with a chronic condition of the eyelids (great) that then led to this bloody mess.

Running Away
We took this shot of the train schedule in Arles so that we could figure out in the hotel how we were going to make it to Italy the next day to avoid a massive french rail strike.

Roman ruins
We did no research at all before coming to Provence and were surprised to see the ruins of a roman ampitheatre in the middle of our little french village

Nice, France
After two days of train hopping and stress about getting out of the country, we were two not very happy campers as we tried to find a place to eat lunch...the only thing we had time to do in Nice. Instead of a nice french bistro (none of which were serving real food at this time of day) we ended up in the american cafeteria style crap shack eating bad salisbury steak and cold french fries. Not our fondest memory of the region.