July Trip
19/7 - In Transit (Italy-France)

Let's Go said Italian trains were efficient. I don't want to see what they consider an inefficient train system.

I was in the train station before 7am, and in the cafe everyone else was having a coffee (in the smallest plastic cups I'd ever seen - Turkish coffee size but in plastic, which I didn't know they made) or at the most a fruit juice for breakfast. I had a granite. It was a good deal - €1,50 for half a pint (it said so on the cup). The cashier was giving me odd looks. I think all the people were laughing at me, but heck - it was my last granite in Italy.

A stand at the train station was selling: "Top Anal" (the same series that gave us "Top Gay", perchance?), "Prostituta Miliardaria", "Transex incontri" and "Lesbian girls" (the cover looked like it had CG jap girls on it). Even the Pope can't stop this filth!

There was a young couple in the train with an older woman (their older sister?) who took pictures of the both of them. Then the younger girl took the camera and snapped a picture of herself in her seat. Camwhoring is one thing, but this is ridiculous.

A sign on a corridor in the train: "Smoking is not permitted on this train. Smoking is not permitted on all trains. Transgressors will be subject to a 7 euro fine. This provision applies regardless of any other (even contrary) indications that may be displayed in the coaches."

At Albenga, parts of the beach were full of umbrellas and people. I guess it was part of the Italian riviera. The sea was shimmering blue and boundless stretching to the horizon. Its expanse was broken occasionally by a yacht, verdant island or speedboat. I was amazed at how many people were free to go on vacation in July/August. Don't they need to work? Maybe it's too hot to work in summer, and people there only get to enjoy the sun, sea, sand and... swimming for 3 months a year so they seize the opportunity when they can; anyway the concept of a summer holiday doesn't work out in the land of Eternal Summer.

A 14 year old girl was wearing a yellow T-shirt with cap sleeves and the words "Hope. Faith. Love." I should get a customised one which reads: "Prudence. Temperance. Fortitude. Justice."

Most French trains also need to be booked - even non-TGV (TGV is the ultra-quick express line) ones, unless they're the slow or intra-regional ones. Gah. Why can't they be like Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium where you can just hop onto trains? It'd be so much easier to get my brother-in-law to drive me around, and someone might finally come in useful due to French knowledge.

The Italian and French rivieras are pretty much the same, with sun, sand, sea and... swimming. Though the part between Nice and Marseille is nicer, having fewer people. nice brown rock formating (?)

I checked the automated ticket machines at Marseille St Charles, but they were being wonky. I checked out the trains from Marseille to Arles and Marseille to Nimes the next day and later in the day, but they seemed to claim they were fully booked (later I realised "Reservation not possible" meant that seats on those trains were not sold out but rather not reservable). They also refused to accept my credit cards (I didn't have a Eurocard Mastercard, but surely my Visa should've worked!) The train timings were also quite weird, so I decided to skip Marseille (I only really wanted to see the Basilica, and maybe the islands, and this time I'd have more time for Nimes/Arles) and spend 3 nights in Nimes. Oddly enough, the Visa worked at the ticket office.

France was the first European country I'd come across this year with a youth discount on intra-country travel (though for some reason I didn't qualify for it when I bought the ticket in Milan). For the rest, the discount applied only on crossing borders. Conceivably, it *might* be cheaper to buy a ticket to travel further (thus crossing a border) to get a discount for the rest of the trip.

Most European train tickets are so big (airline boarding pass size). The Dutch are the best, having small slips of paper which are environmentally friendly.

2 French girls were doing maths beside me on the train. One was staring at the first page of a textbook that said "lnes" and instructed on how to solve simultaneous equations with 3 variables. Another was annotating a book with a pen. It was July! Why were they so kiasu?

A young French couple went into the area between train carriages and stopped in the gangway and kissed. Then the (transparent) carriage doors closed around them. Tsk.