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Published: February 26th 2016
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Thursday February 18 - Another long travel day. I took the train at 10:22 from Nice to Toulouse. I only left the apartment at 10am and made it on the train with 10 minutes to spare. I think this was my best train ride. I was on the train for seven hours, but I was sitting in a two-seater, and no one ever sat next to me. It was such a treat to have the whole place to myself. And the set-up was really great. I place to stash my journal and my book, and a tray table for doing some chemistry, to keep myself from reading the whole book after writing in my journal. And the bathroom was close. I went there first thing, but it turned out this is one of the trains that you can't use in the station, since the toilet flushes right onto the track. Yes, that is still a thing. Don't walk on train tracks. I just passed the time reading and writing and watching out the window. And planning when and what I could eat next from my stash. Chocolate has become like cocaine for me. I have three lines left for the next
two days...how to partition that? For the first part of the trip I was riding backwards, and there was coastline. After Marseilles, I was going forward but no more coast. This was the best train ride of the trip. Oh yeah.
After the train, I had a couple of hours in Toulouse before my 7:30pm bus to Andorra. First I stopped at the train ticket office and had them print out my tickets for my journey home on Saturday. I bought all four train rides online from Captain Train - highly recommended - but some of their tickets can't be printed at home but must be printed at the station, and then only once (if you lose them, you're not getting on the train). So I waited until now to do it and it was easy. The only strange thing is that I have to validate the tickets at a machine before I get on. A) I wonder if I was supposed to do that to Monaco and B) Why? It has my name and seats and the date on it. Why validate them?
Once that was taken care of, I found the bus station, which was nearby,
for when I needed it later. Then I walked into town, with a map I carefully crafted that morning with the help of google. Really it was just a random sketch, but it actually worked. I found a church, looked around a little, and then headed back. I needed to eat dinner before I left, and I found a kebab shop with a bathroom, so all my needs could be met. Finding a bathroom has been a major goal on this trip, much more often that expected. Really annoying. The kebab was really good. From there I went back to the train station and tried their "free wifi" but with minimal success. Then I went a bit early to the bus, since I didn't know if I'd have to fight for a good seat. I got there just after 7pm and the bus was already there, but it was a tiny bus. The driver let me on and we chatted a bit. He's a friendly guy from Spain living in Andorra. He's also starting an ecological company with bison - sounds interesting. Two more women came and then we drove to the airport to pick up one guy and that
was it. The drive from the airport took almost three hours, into the mountains at break-neck speeds. It was clear, then raining, then snowing as we got higher and higher. And the temperature dropped to freezing.
We arrived in the capital, Andorra la Vella, at 11:45pm, and I waited for 10 minutes for Maria, my airbnb host, to pick me up. We walked back to her apartment for about 10-15 minutes, and it was quite cold. At the apartment she gave me some tips for the next day, as well as some cake, and I met her roommate who just moved here from Mexico. But it was late and I was tired, so I retired to my room. A huge bummer is that one of both of them smoke in the house. I haven't seen it, but it hit me like a wall when I walked in. It just reeks of it. I'm sure I reek of it. I can't believe I didn't think to ask before I booked.
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