Three years ago I was in Paris and having something to eat in one of the several street corner cafés within a two-minute walk from my hotel. It was a weekday evening, but every table was taken, both inside the restaurants and spilling out onto the sidewalk. It was the same every night I was…
Deep down I always felt that adding a dozen days to my Washington trip to see and ride The Little Yelllow Train was a real stretch. And, yes, I know I’m fresh off the experience and pumped up, but it WAS worth it! The rail strike screwed up my day after the ride and…
The better part of the day yesterday was spent traveling from Carcassonne to Vernet-les-Bains by way of Narbonne and Perpignan. It was another bi-level TGV that brought me to Perpignan and that magnificent train sat there in the railway station, engine idling, waiting to load passengers for Barcelona. The damn thing was mocking me. Once…
As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, there is a strike by railway workers underway here in France and, as with most things French, it’s being conducted in a uniquely French way. The union members–that’s pretty much everybody–don’t want to paralyze the country, so they only walk out a few days each week. And some trains…