The 10:34 to Marseilles

The 14:57 to Nice

   If this first rail trip is any indication, it might be that my previous experiences with Eurail already represent a bygone era.

   The first clue was that the Marseille train lacked both a club car or even a beverage cart. Not that I had planned to pop a cork at 10:30 in the morning, but it suggested a certain joie de vivre had departed the pleasures of train travel. I’m guessing post- Covid.  Everything else about the first class carriage was about as I’d remembered it: comfortable seats, spacious legroom and countryside rolling merrily past. I would look up from my book periodically to watch it all rumble by. I was very happy and so was Carol.

“Fortunately  I realize how bad I am with description, otherwise these next paragraphs would be filled with some of the most tortured, stomach turning attempts to put into words the bliss that overtakes me on an efficient, smooth running train such as this one.”

 

   There were only three stops along this nearly 500 mile route that would take seven hours by car, but only half that by train. Imagine traveling in a way that made you wish the journey took longer than just three and a half hours, and you have some idea how jiggy I am with trains.

   Fortunately  I realize how bad I am with description, otherwise these next paragraphs would be filled with some of the most tortured, stomach turning attempts to put into words the bliss that overtakes me on an efficient, smooth running train such as this one. Imagine this blog in the hands of a Hemingway or a John Irving, and you’ll have a better idea of just how soaring and literary I feel at this moment.

   On the subject of smooth running, I would direct all of you to Google searches on the subject of continuous rails, track curvatures, carriage tilts and tunnel construction (to manage the compressed air that high speed rail creates) for mind blowing insights into the genius that high speed rail engineering required to produce the product that I so cavalierly take for granted today. (No beverage cart? This is madness!)

   While the French countryside is bucolic, it is also boring as hell after about an hour or so. Which is why staring blankly into space is one of my great pleasures of European rail travel. I would say you could measure the pleasure in ounces of drool produced, but Carol would not like that description at all. (I’ve inserted that last statement after she’d finished her edits.)

   Sadly, train journeys end far too quickly for me, and the three hours plus passed way too fast. I wish air travel passed this way, but railroads were built on concepts of customer comfort, rather than economies of time.  I get it, but there’s something about arriving at a sprawling train station and just sauntering off the carriage and then directly out into the  bustle of a city center that is just so invigorating and refreshing.

    When we arrived in Nice from our connection in Marseille, we sauntered (I’ll be using that word a lot when discussing my rail travels, if you haven’t already noticed) down narrow winding streets until we happened upon a sweet little corner café,  where we enjoyed a couple of glasses and booked a nearby hotel for the next several days. It’s up to Carol now to see if we do anything productive or personally enriching in this town. It’s located on the shores of the Mediterranean and is part of something called the French Riviera, I think. All I know is that it was one sweet ride from Paris.