For this past week, I have been travelling through the South of France with Charles, my American housemate. I have hundreds of pictures posted, which really tell the story. The pictures posted here are only a very small sample of what I took.
My journey began in Lourdes, a site strong in Roman Catholicism. I toured around the big church, as well as a castle (shown below). Overall, this was quite a beautiful old-looking city with plenty of nature visible.
Outside the town’s famed grotto, I met a Catholic priest from India who wanted me to take his picture. He spoke about his intention to see all the holy sights in Lourdes, and also invited us to come see India.
When night fell, Lourdes pretty much shut down, so I spent a few hours at the train station waiting for my night train to come. There, we met a woman from the Philippines who didn’t speak French, and was having trouble adjusting to the French rail system. She missed her stop a few days before for Lourdes, and paid 50 Euro for a taxi. Ouch!
We arrived in Nice the next day. My favourite part was definitely the beach area and soft blue coloured water.
A huge wind storm came up mid-afternoon, and it was a bit of a challenge to walk against the wind. I was fine for as long as I didn’t see any objects other than a tree leaf fly towards me. I stayed at Hotel Dante which was pretty nice for the price, including a small fridge, sink, and stove.
After Nice was Monaco Monte-Carlo for a morning. I wasn’t rich or well-dressed enough to enter the famous casinos, but I did get to see much of the small city in just a few hours.
I am standing outside the Prince’s Palace here.
Finding a post office was a bit of a challenge here when I wanted to send a post card. I can’t complain though since Saint John has a large building in the Uptown labelled “Post Office”, even though it has been in use for years only by Revenue Canada and Customs (which itself is down the street from the “Customs Building” which does not contain any Customs offices).
After Monaco, I was in Cannes only for a short while in the afternoon. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot there, although it was another beautiful seaside city.
The last stop on the trip was Lyon for 2 nights. This is one of the larger cities in France, including its own metro system that I used extensively. There was lots of wonderful architecture here, and plenty to see.
This is me sitting on a very old Roman Theatre.
A relatively new church that is only about 100 years old.
Zooming in part of the city.
Me standing outside City Hall. There is plenty of construction going on everywhere.
So that’s the trip. There was a lot of train rides, and I realized that the train controllers actually do check for tickets quite often, sometimes even twice on one ride. Train is the way to go between cities in a relaxing and fairly safe atmosphere.
Today, I was unhappy to note the failure of my Sony music player. The volume control now gets stuck in the “increase” position, forcing the sound to full blast and preventing any other buttons from working. I tried to take the unit apart to see if I could fix it, but the problem is inside a tiny switch that has probably worn out inside. Tomorrow, I hope to buy a new music player. Not sure what I’m going to go for yet.
That’s all for now!