Goodbye Greece (oh yeah, and Milan)

Trip Start Jun 05, 2006
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Trip End Aug 01, 2006


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Flag of France  ,
Saturday, July 8, 2006

To all you skeptics out there whose cynical leanings with respect to my ability to shake my-own-self outta bed in the earlier hours of the morning, developed through years of observation and study on the matter, I would like you to know: I got up at 6am this morning to catch the early train to Nice. There was only a short, anxious moment when I thought I would miss the train, because I hadn't noticed the little (R) next to the Nice listings in the Eurail schedule, which indicates "reservation required." First I couldn't find an attendant to ask if that would be a problem, and then I waited in the last-minute line to get a reservation, getting to the front only 5 minutes before my train, to have the guy tell me I had to go to another queue for international trips. So, running to that line, I found that it was, fortunately, rather short and I yelled out to anybody that my train was leaving in 4 minutes, could anybody plllleeeeaase let me in front of them--to which two girls turned and straight smirked at me and one nicer girl at the back said, sure go ahead. But then she told me I wasn't going to make this line so I should just go get on the train. Which I did. And I found an open seat and as my breathing slowed to a normal level, drifted off to a wakeful krick-neck sleep. As it turned out, nobody even came by to check my ticket during the whole 5 hour trip, which I was both happy and disappointed to note.

In any case, I got to Nice at just past noon, found the hotel, and was just having a losing argument with the receptionist as to my having a reservation when Kelly came around a corner and cleared everything up. Everybody else showed up about 30 minutes later, seeming quite as excited to see me as I was them, but then went to the Matisse Museum to gawk at a few paintings while I unwound from basically three days of rather taxing travel. Later, I went to a Saturday-packed pebble (read: hand to knuckle-sized rocks) beach and played frisbee with Drew and Kelly, managing not to hit any kids in the head or run into anything while walking past groups of topless sunbathers. We're about to go to dinner, and then watch the consolation match between Portugal and Germany, who will duke it out for third place in the World Cup. Then I think we're supposed to do this big trampoline-jumping thing with huge bungies that let you do double and triple flips and maybe hang out on the beach and drink some wine with the locals, or at least the local tourists. Tomorrow Jon and Jill are leaving early to Barcelona, as will Drew and Anne-Elise, but there's a chance Kelly, Robert and Jenn will stay in town with me in order to witness the street-shenanigans during and post the final World Cup match: France v. Italy. Vive le France! Well, I'm late for meeting up with et al. for dinner. Update on France's stance on their chance at World Cup glory to come. Ah, it appears to have started thundering...

have respective good ones,

matt
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