The first to pass us in our carriage was a potentially fractious pair of toddlers, Beanie and Cecil (not their real names). Even were we to plan future excursions not to overlap with national school breaks, I realized there’d still be no guarantee to avoiding the likes of a pair of screaming two-year-olds who believe trains were made for running up and down the aisles, depositing candy floss to armrests along the way.

   Carol and I have been traveling together for two weeks now, and we’ve been having as wonderful a time as I’d expected. It’s when I think that everything is going great that I normally start to worry that something is about to reveal itself as terribly wrong. Carol calls it Reid being Reid.

   “I’m having a wonderful time,” Carol said to me, as we waited for our train to Nice. “I love these train rides.”