At 5:30 on Thursday morning we left our little quaint hotel in Sarlat, leaving the big shining key behind and started a semi-long trek up and up to the train station. The birds had already started chirping and it was a very mild morning. It was very peaceful and pretty on our 20-minute walk to the station. I even caught myself before stepping on a snail!
Sarlat - leaving the morning of 4-12 005
We boarded the train at Sarlat at 6:05 and arrived in Le Buisson at 6:45. Our next train to Agen did not depart until 8:06 so I took a little snooze on the plastic chairs. Luckily we had 2 apples, 1 orange, and 1 pear with us because our train transfers didn’t allow us enough time to look for something to eat.
We arrived in Agen at 9:25 and caught the next train to Marseille at 9:30. We thought we would be taking this train to Toulese, but we decided to stay on all the way after we saw a lady with a food cart go by, just like on airplanes! Finally we were able to eat!
On the train and in Nice 2007-04-12 008
Our train ride to Marseille was 5.5 hours, then almost immediately we boarded a train from Marseille to Nice.
We arrived at Nice around 6pm. The tourist office was closed so we found a map and headed in the general direction of some hotels in the distance. We continued by several hotels and were just walking around when we came upon “Hotel Darcy”. For %^&*s and giggles we checked it out. DIVE with a capital D. I told Ben we could just take a picture of it, but he was set on staying since it was in our price range.
Hotel Darcy!!!
We had a shared bathroom and shower room for 8 rooms. There was a “Southpark” picture on the wall. Crappy, but what else do we need? So we settled in!
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We headed out to find some Wifi and came upon “Le Grand Café de Leon”, where the guy gave us 45 minutes of free internet access, but we did buy 4 drinks there! On our way back to the hotel we stopped by a place for some fresh made pizza and a “coke light” (diet coke) for only Є5!
Late night place to eat, yummy pizza and friendly people!
On Friday morning (April 13th) we started out the day in the fabulous bathrooms of Hotel Darcy. Really nothing is grossing me out anymore. There was a spider crawling along my towel this morning while I was showering with Ben in the open shower, and it didn’t even phase me. It can’t get worse, right? On the other hand we did have a good breakfast of a croissant, bread, and coffee, compliments of Hotel Darcy!
As we found our way down to the shoreline, things looked a lot different than what we had been seeing lately. We walked along the rocky beach admiring the beautiful colors and sounds of the waves. The crashing of the waves on the rocks made for a beautiful landscape and morning! The beach is made up of white sand and a lot of weathered stones. They were quite beautiful as well. Most of the stones were black and white, but some were this vibrant orange color.
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We continued walking and found our path into the pedestrian area filled with Artisan shops and bakeries and creperies and pizzerias! All the smells were fantastic! We stopped at a juice bar where all the drinks are made right there in front of you. Basically she just took the ingredients and shoved them into her industrialized juicer and viola! Our juices were 100% natural and fabulous! Ben got a “Flamingo” consisting of “fraise, orange, banana and yaourt” (strawberry, orange, banana and yogurt), and I got the “Bugs Bunny” consisting of “carotte, pomme and gingembre” (carrot, apple and ginger). YUM! We tried to connect to their Wifi but still we were unsuccessful!
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We continued walking and decided to eat our lunch at a park under a large but short palm tree. This provided us with some shelter as throughout the day it just kept spitting rain here and there. After lunch we continued to walk around and just decided to try one of the thousands of Internet Cafés around. Finally Internet! The Internet Café was a small room jammed with teenage boys playing WarCraft online with each other. It was a complete dive, but it was a place we did not have to feel pressure to buy coffee or drinks to use the internet, plus it was super cheap! We paid some bills, checked our messages and voicemails and made a few blog posts… very productive afternoon!
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I got a message from Jess in Houston, and she is engaged CONGRATS AGAIN!!!
Once again we wanted to go for supper around 5pm, but the restaurant did not start serving food until 7pm. This has been happening a lot. I think they really enjoy their lunches, having a big meal, and then drinks around 5 or so until the restaurants serve food again. It’s not like in the States where instant gratification is a must. Here people take their time and plan out their meals. I love it!
So in waiting to eat supper, we picked up a couple of 24 oz beers from a convenience store and headed for the sea. It was so beautiful and the waves were so big! We sat on the rocks and enjoyed the people watching (which included many couples making out and groping each other). We drank our beers and threw some rocks into the waves. On our way back, there was a carousel that was not operating this morning when we passed it, but now was serving rides! I went on it and felt like a princess! (Ben did not want to ride on it, but I had more fun by myself anyway!) All I could think about was Rachel because she loves carrousels!
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Around the corner form our hotel was a restaurant called “Charte de Qualite des Cafes Brassries” where we had supper. We got a 50 cl (centiliter) carafe of rosè wine, I ordered the Ravioli de basilica and Ben got the trout in butter with lemon. Um, the trout was the whole trout, eyeballs and all! Our meal was fairly inexpensive and very satisfying, especially with the café to end it.
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We returned to the hotel, cracked open the bottle of dessert wine and caramelized nuts we had bought for gifts that we couldn’t travel with us, and blogged. By the way, all we brought was a leatherman’s tool, so ½ the cork for the wine ended up in the bottle! We are living classy!
1 comment:
Wow, wow, wow! It's been a lot of fun to see your guys pictures. What a fun looking trip really amazing!
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