Goodbye to Barcelona and lovely Spain. I had an absolutely brilliant time and was sad to leave. Jess left Emma and I to go to the airport and we were off to the train station. One train to the Spanish/French border and then there was a wait at one of the worlds most boring train stations. Emma managed to successfully buy train tickets in French without having to resort to English- I was very proud of her. While we were waiting I made friends with a random American guy and we had a lovely chat. The poor bugger had a 6 hour wait to look forward to- I think he was glad to have someone to talk to. And I certainly didn’t mind- he was an absolute spunk! While we were chatting I had to have a bit of a laugh. There was this obvious American couple trying to buy tickets. They obviously didn’t speak any French, but they really were complete idiots. There are certain ways to buy tickets when you don’t speak the language of the seller. I think, when in a train station, that you can safely assume that the seller knows that you want to buy a train ticket. And there is probably no need to, at the top of your voice so loudly that the whole train station can hear, say: “toot toot! Choo choo choo!” It was all I could do not to burst out laughing. I think the young lad I was talking to was embarrassed by association. Poor bugger!
Now another train trip back into France to the lovely town of Avignon. Irritatingly enough, the weather was absolutely beautiful that day and it was gorgeous seeing the sun sparkle off the sea as the train wound around the coastline and inland.
Arriving in Avignon we got a hotel quite cheaply, just outside the old city walls and close to the train station. This would come in handy 2 days later when we had a 4am train to Milan. We had a quick wander around the old town and decided on a hearty dinner of the well known French delicacy – the Kebab. My only complaint with this otherwise lovely dinner was the fact that French people refuse to acknowledge the existence of falafel and I had to have meat.
The next morning we went to the pope’s palace. At one time in history there was 2 popes after a sort of schism in the Catholic Church. One pope lived in Italy, and the other in Avignon in France. Naturally he had to build a whopping great palace to live in because poverty was certainly not one of his vows. It was pretty impressive, but I certainly would have appreciated a few more of the signs being in English. After that we wandered around the old town- it was lovely- although the usual shitty weather that we had grown accustomed to was back. We had a lovely lunch of crepes (when in France!) and an even better dessert of lemon sundaes from McDonalds. GORGEOUS! More French-ness for dinner, I can’t remember exactly what, and an early night to be ready for the early morning train in the morning. Tomorrow I’m off to Italia!
