Our very long day of travel...

Monday May 14th, 2007

After taking off from the hostel, we managed to get seats on a train to Bordeaux. It took approx. 3 hours. From there we had a few hours to kill in the town. After filling up on some French food, we caught our next train to Irun, Spain where we would transfer to our train to Madrid. This one was our sleeper train and had our couchette, holding 6 people. Read our review of our 'lodging' to hear more about it.

The room smelled like, ' Pringles and Feet!'

Funny story though. After getting on our sleeper train, two Americans seemed to have the same beds as us in our same couchette. We thought that something was wrong with how the tickets were dispensed, not that we had perhaps overlooked something incorrectly. Unfortunately, when the Americans went to check out what was causing this confusion, we discovered that we had purchased tickets for the following night! Thankfully, there was still room on the train for everyone, so we managed to get through that night! However, it was odd how the train-stewardess had to keep our Eurail Passes overnight. But she returned them in the morning as she had said.

Being on a sleeper train opens your eyes to some different people too. Going for a trip to the washroom, I saw some crazy people wearing magicians hats, playing guitars etc. Apparently, there were some French policemen on the train as they came to check our wallets for our passports. However, they were pretty fishy policeman. Their badges looked fake, they were wearing ordinary clothes and they left after only checking two of our passports. It was weird.

From a personal note (Lindsay's view), it was an interesting and perhaps smelly overnight excursion sleeping in such a tiny room with 5 other men! The room smelled like, 'Pringles and Feet.'