We were about to travel some 12 hours by train leaving Alicante one of Spain's railway stations and heading for Toulouse in France.The Train would stop in France at a place called Narbonne about one hour and half hours into France and were we would have a hotel for the night, before catching an early morning train onto Toulouse,as the train from Spain did not go to Toulouse,and this would take us approximately one hours train ride into Toulouse.
The train journey was long and tiring,although the sites were the most beautiful, especially leaving the Costa Blanca's dry sandy looking desert,in fact we had not seen any rain in the Costa's for some months now,well i think the last and first storm we encountered was in October,the rains were heavy and lasted for about three days and before that we had a year almost without any rain,so you can imagine what the ground and Plant life looked like.
Anyway we are now in March and the weather leaving Alicante was gorgeous,and that's the weather we expected to greet us in France.
We was expecting to see some lovely sites along the way,most of the first hour or so was along the coast,small Coves with beautiful blue Mediterranean waters were just stunning to see, almost every bay we passed along the way people would be swimming in the sea or bathing on the sandy beaches that stretched for miles.
It was soon apparent that we were starting to head in land, and the scenery started to change quickly,this part of the country was no longer views of the beautiful Mediterranean,that we had grown accustom too, in fact we were greeted by large green forest,and mountains which were standing tall and proud reaching for the blue Sky's,a hint of mist on the very highest tops.The Rocky brownish dark and light in colour stone that made up these mountains looked absolutely stunning and almost could take your breath away,we had really been away from the inland areas for to long,living on the coast for so long we almost forgot how it all looked.
We travelled at a steady speed of about 100mph on a very fast smooth and quiet Train heading towards Valencia,A very old and big city that's was the largest on the Costa Blanca, we had been to this city before,and loved it. Soon we would pass Valencia after a short stop to pick up and drop off passengers,and then head towards Madrid, and then following on towards Barcelona,which took approximately seven hours,as there were many stops along the way.
We only had some five hours left to travel,so at this time we were feeling quite hungry, so we decided to go and get some well earned food, we made it to the Cafe bar on the train, well it certainly was not a restaurant,and the tables did not have any table cloths on,it was that wood looking plastic finish,and you could see the smear marks from the cleaning cloth they had used,may be that's why the Spanish people did not eat there,as they had bags and bags of food with them and obviously better prepared than we were.
We could not understand why they were not eating in the Cafe area of the train, was it that the food was to expensive, or was not that good to eat.
We would soon find out...... o'h by the way the cutlery was plastic too.....But the food looked good on the menu,so we ordered the days special,..... we were on a train,so we asked for the menu that looked the best, and we hoped it ate well,and although the Spanish Train system is good....it is safe......fast......and among all other things it is on time, so we would expect the food to have the same sort of quality.
We sat ourselves down with a vino( Red wine)and waited anxiously for our meal to be served,as they had told us to take a seat, they would bring it to us when it was ready.We had little chuckle to each other,as there were only two tables in this very small cafe come restaurant,and we had took the last one,on the other table a young mother was sitting rocking a baby to sleep in a pushchair,we hoped that no one else decided to eat,as they would have to sit on our knees, well there was a couple seats at the bar, and only one had been taken, but it did not seem the right place to eat a meal....maybe a snack !!Mmmmmmmmmmm.
Anyway the waiter turned up at our table looking very smart in his white shirt, tie and waist coat,with his napkin come Tea towel hanging from his arm.
My wife thanked him for the meal as he placed it down in front of her, and then he placed my plate down on the table in front of me,he spoke to say enjoy your meal as he left.
The Plates had taken up most of the table space,we knew we were going to keep hitting each other on the elbow from time to time as we tried to make space to eat.....BUT after all that!.......The the food was really good and very edible,we ate Peppered Steak....(medium cooked)....a Baked Potato,Vegetables,and a Salad Dressing, and this meal was large, well cooked and tasty,and the Vino Tinto was superb.
I would not have believed we could have eaten such lovely food,especially on a train,and the one thing that was so strange,you could not have a meal on your Carriage table,you were only aloud snacks,and that in the form of a sandwich etc,but at least now we could finish the journey feeling full of food.
We were almost at the border with France,and the train slowed almost to a halt,travelling through a very dark tunnel which seemed for ever,the train stopped in total darkness,the lights went out for approximately 30 seconds, coming back on to raptuas applause.The tunnel was rocky which made us think we must have been inside the Pyrenees mountains which separated France and Spain.
We seemed to have been in this tunnel for at least 15 minutes when the sliding doors which separated the carriages opened and Police entered,these were French police we could tell by the hats on their heads,Then following them was a civilian male and female, these two were asking for our Passports or ID, they soon passed them back to us as they quickly checked our identification was correct.
The police men looked very interested in certain males and colour, they seemed to know what they were looking for, the police had hand guns with their hands clasped around the butt,and their trigger finger pointed strait down away from the trigger.
The time was passing quickly and it must have been something like 30 minutes in this tunnel,a noise of the other sliding door opened behind us,and as i looked back they entered the next carriage checking everyone, this was not any ordinary border check,as these people were looking for someone or something.
It was about five to ten minutes later, and the sliding door again opened behind us, and the police and plain clothes officers returned,they had arrested a male who had brown skin and looked scruffy,he was walking between the two police officers,and was handcuffed,this really made us feel quite scary, but thankfully it looked like this event had come to an end,and we hoping this journey could carry on so as we could safely make it to our stop.
The train soon started to move forward,and within a couple of minutes we soon saw day light,the train was traveling very slowly passed a lot of police and other people who probable were custom staff i really don't know...But what ever they were after they seemed to have found......who was he?.......was he a terrorist we really did not get to find out, but i can tell you we could not wait to get out of that train.
As we railed into the French territory there was such a difference in the scenery, it changed so quickly, the one thing i noticed strait away was that there were loads and loads of Poppy's growing all over the side of the embankments,it reminded me of November 11th and made me think of Flanders, what a beautiful site, i had never seen so many Poppy's except when i saw a film on the tele about the Poppy fields in France.
We had heard that our train station was approaching, so we got our selves ready close to the exit close our cases, so we could quickly get a prime spot to get off the train, and this we did.
The weather was fine in France and it was close to six o'clock in the evening,now we had to find a taxi rank,so as to get to our Hotel for the night,and this was no problem, we booked into a lovely hotel,and made strait for our room where we crashed out on the bed for some two hours.
After our sleep of sleeps it was a matter of refreshing ourselves and getting out into this small seaside town for a bite to eat
and a walk along the coast, we felt quite at home beeing back by the coast,as this was a beatiful part of France,this part of france on the East Coast would be where the French would visit for a day out.
A small walk back to the Hotel was now in order,as we had eaten far to much and drank to many french Glasses of Wine....it had been along day out, and it started at 6.30am and finished at 9.45pm rather a long day...."Yawn Yawn"...GOODNIGHT..&..GOD BLESS!!
Tomorrow we start again early in the morning our train leaves for Toulouse.
The Hotel staff had made sure we were woken early,and a French style Breakfast was waiting for our arrival,and this did not include a full English Fry up, how disappointing, but we had come to France so i suppose the order of the day.... WAS....."do as the Romans did".
We did have a cereal with milk, and of course a croissant and a little marmalade, so we had at least filled a small gap in our stomachs, and could start the day in fine fettle and await anything that was put in front of us.
The Train Station was packed out with alsorts of commuters mainly i would have thought going to work, so we were in the middle of the rush hour in France,and i think everyone had decided to use the train on this particular day,or was the normal for France,as the trains in France were fast, full, and on time.
We had purchased two tickets for Toulouse,and in France, we had been warned it was a scramble for seats, as with the Spanish service your ticket was also your seat.
The train was to leave in approximately 20 minutes, so we placed ourselves half way down the platform,hoping this was the correct place to be able to get on the train and be seated.
The train arrived and it was massive,really bigger than we had expected, as this was the fast train going north west towards i think to Paris, the carriages kept passing us by, when was the train going to stop,it kept going and going,there must have been 20 carriages and they were large in length,the train came to a halt,both myself and my wife were going giddy, it was a mad dash, that we had not experience anywhere before, both of us with cases started to move forward,as did everyone else it was matter of barge yourselves through,it was really horrible.
We had made it onto the train, but now it was full of people and no one could move, people were trying to move down the train in different directions,some people were actually lying on the floors across the doorways, it was impossible to move, we had to climb over bodies who would not move,this did not happen on the Spanish train, we did not expect anything like this,and we did not get a seat for the whole journey which lasted 90 minutes.
It was such a great feeling to land at the Toulouse train station,we could not wait to meet our daughter and grandchildren,the weather had took a dive for the worst, it was cold and throwing it down with rain,such a change in just a day from something like 75 deg.F in Spain to a low 8 or 9 deg.
We met the family and they had been delayed as the weather had caused a few problems with Flooding,and now we had a 20 minute drive to their house in the country just outside Toulouse.
We spent most of the rest of the day chatting,and watched the weather get worse, we were looking forward to tomorrow,as we were going up the mountains skiing,Well we were going only for site seeing, it would be our kids who would be spending their time probable falling over in the snow with ski's on,and we would be able look at the beautiful snow capped mountain ranges,something we had only seen on Television.
We would all have an early nights sleep, ready for our two hour track up the large snow capped mountains,I believe our son-in-law had put the Chains on the vehicle already for the trip.
We woke up early to the children saying look outside,we could not believe what we were seeing, we were almost snowed in,all night the snow had come without warning,we were not going anywhere,and it did not look good from our bedroom window.It was decided after listening to the local news that the roads would be blocked up near the slopes, so we were not going out that particular day.
Check the photo's out in my next post...... Were been stranded in a country chateau surrounded by snow.
"Great to see the family, but we were not going to see the mountains"
All roads were cut off,so it was decided to have a day in, and see what the next day brought, but we could not go far, as not only the weather, but our Son-in-law had to go to work on the next day as it was Monday, and his shifts meant we would be there whilst he worked, but at least we got to see our daughter & kids etc and that was great,as we had not seen them for a few months.
We Would soon have to leave France on our journey back to Spain in a few days....and another 12 hour Train Journey! Dont worry i will not tell you about the Return Train trip to Spain......Unless you would like to here about it,so if you do, post me a comment.................and watch this space.
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