Paris, Italy and a great train ride.

Well well well, What a week I have had. Still, when travelling you sort of have to accept the good with the bad, and the bad with the good, and this week had been no exception. And I still stand to my theory of it’s all about experiences. So I will start at where I left off last week. I had just finished sailing and I hoped for the weather to be a bit rougher. It was rough - but nothing like the bashing wind loving waves we had experienced the day before, this was slow moving big swell. Now I understand how people get sea sick, I was a long way from getting sea sick, and reading 300 pages of a book didn't help, but didn't feel too great. So we got back that night, watched woodstock live in concert, and then went to sleep. THe next day we slept in till 9-10 and we got a car to drive us around the island, there is not much really to see where we were, but we had a nice lunch made by Gale and ate it on a beach and saw a few things - bought my train ticket to Cagliari the next day in preparation for my flight to paris.

All's well that ends well.

Today - started out according to plan. Got up, breakfast, checked out the french metro on my computer, got driven near the station - short walk ( fine) about an hour till my train left, sat down at the right platform and listened to my ipod for 50 minutes.... That's when my day was thrown completely upside down, arriving at the train I was meant to board that would take me down the wobbly track to Caliari I was rudely stopped from getting on the train, without missing a step, I produced a valid ticket to with which I still received the same response.. No train... - well, I could clearly see that there was a train right in front of me, and it was going to the place that I needed to get to, so after receiving another barrage of Italian, I looked around for support, and there was plenty of it. 20ish people were trying to get on the train also.... So... I eventually heard the word "strike" and it turned out that the trains were on strike, so to my disamy, the train that was to take me on my journey 350kms, rolled out of the station minus about 40 angry potential passengers. So being unfazed at this point, with my patience still in full check, I rolled back to the ticket office to get my money back. As I watched the people before me present their ticket and receieve their money, I followed, only to be put to the side and made to wait for a HUGGGEEE amount of time. 36 minutes I was standing not being able to communicate with the ticket office people ( who didn't speak english at all...) and then after being requested to show my passport and my drivers license,(WHY!!) I got no money.... So I left the station with a mixture of emotions... "stupid Italians.. ",and  one with a little bit of "How the hell am I going to get to my flight, which is the best part of 400kms away" - which as I thought about it more, was the main thought going through my head. So I headed up the hill, down the hill, lugging my overweight bag to the tourist information office, which by luck was opening just as I arrived. So after a nice english speaking italian told me that I should have got my money, and that THE STRIKE HAD BEEN PLANNED FOR WEEKS!!!!! - so they knew that they shouldn't have been selling tickets!!! GRRRRRR. So she called the call center of the trains, and got the 'official info' and wrote me a note in italian demanding my money back. So from happy to my initial horror of hearing "there is no way of getting there today" as an afterthought - there is plane leaving soon, - to which I replied (forgetting my fondness of planes) "done" so I was off to catch another plane, with a quick stopover at the train station to give them my note - and to my almost anger they gave my money back IMMEDIATELY... *Sigh* and it was off to find the bus stop... So I found the right bus, but I got on on the end of a loop, so I had to ride the bus for a long long time before it arrived at the airport. Along with a awkward discussion with the bus driver, him talking and me not understanding, I arrived at the airport, perfectly rolled through local customs, and sat down for my 3 hour wait. To my dismay, and to people who have been to indonesia would know, the jets that take off with a thick layer of smoke or fumes coming from the engines were here in force in italy. These were the planes that I was watching from the boat the day before, thanking myself that I was going on the train. The flight was rough. Enough said. So an arrival at the airport, everything back on track, and I had shaken the feeling that I was going to miss meeting everyone in France. The day had to get better - and thankfully it did. I have to go now but I will update this tomorrow night. Tomorrow night - the first french meeting, the war pictures, and of course the Eiffel tower.

I will leave you with this picture.

The streets of Sardinia

This is a night sailing picture of the approach to sardinia.