Nice, France

So to all of you who knew our planned schedule for the last two and a half weeks throw it out of the window. You are probably also wondering why I am labeling this blog Nice, but it is true we are here. After a week of figuring things out we finally have our trains worked out all to get in and out of Barcelona. Let me start at the beginning of this story however.

So our last morning in Rome we awoke to get breakfast to head to the train station early in order to reserve our last few train tickets for the trip. After waiting in a relatively short international bookings line we get to the front and find out that we can't take the overnight train from Milan to Barcelona like we had planned. Not only can we not take it on the night that we planned but it was completely booked until the 17th of August and it is the only city in Italy that has connection to Barcelona. From this information we decided that we needed to consider our options and searched out the TI office, which we found only dealt with the city of Rome, but directed us to the train travel agency. After talking to the man behind the counter we had our options but none of them would be nice. We realized there was nothing we could do until we got to La Spezia and could talk to another train person. The train ride was one of anxiousness for all of us, when it should have been one of relaxation and excitement because we were heading to the beautiful area of Cinque Terre.

To make a long story shorter, we ended up deciding to lose a day in Barcelona and to stay in Nice for a night. Unfortunately our bad luck didn't end there. After dealing with getting into Barcelona we realized that night after the beach that we hadn't taken care of getting out of the city. So the next day we headed back to La Spezia, our third time at the train station in three days, to book our trip to Geneva. It was then that we learned we couldn't get a train out of Barcelona to Geneva at all. Everyday that would have worked was completely booked and since we were only spending three nights there we found an internet cafe again to once again way our options. After looking at flights, buses and everything we could think of we had to be realistic and just cut out that leg of the trip. It was very upseting but we knew it was the only way. Back at the train station we booked the first leg of our trip out of Barcelona but were told that because we were in Italy that we couldn't book from the France border on. (Don't ask me because we still can't figure that part out.) We had a schedule in hand and decided that we did as much as we could and enjoyed the rest of our time in Cinque Terre.

Once arriving in Nice we went to setup the rest of our trip our of Barcelona but were told that the train we wanted was booked solid. At that point we could get in to Blois one day late then we would turn around to leave the next day. We have decided against that as well.

So where we stand now. We leave Nice today to spend the whole day on trains to get to Barcelone where we will be for the next 6 nights then we will leave Barcelone, travel to some French border town, have a 9.5 hour layover and take a night train to Paris where we will spend 7 nights. We will have two trips left on our Eurail passes and plan to take two day trips from Paris before the passes expire, the plan is to go to Blois and Versialle (sorry spelling).

Through all this we have realized how much we miss home and how lucky we have been up until now. We have all the hostels taken care and have places to stay though we will lose a little money getting rid of our other hostels.

We miss everyone and will see you all in a few weeks!

-Hilary