CEBToD: Day 11 -- St. Tropez to Nice

Today was a weird day. It was pretty easy overall... only 25.6 miles with 567 ft of climbing, taking about 2h10m on the bike. Our original plan had been to bike to a train station and then train it into Nice for the night, so we'd have time to see the city, and have a bit of a bike-break after yesterday's grueling ride. Sounds simple... but I'll explain in a bit why it turned out not to be.

First things first... we checked out and got breakfast in the main square: coffee at a little cafe and then foodstuffs at a grocery next door. We then biked around the bay towards the first train station on the map (St. Tropez, if you'll remember, has no station). It was a beautiful ride... the day was sunny, like it's been for most of the trip, and it was in the 90s... but remarkably I haven't been sweating (probably because of the constant breeze from the biking). There were bike paths for much of the journey, so we were able to really enjoy the ride without fear of being hit by errant cars.

So we pulled into the town (Frejus), which looked really cute during the 5 mins we biked through it. We got to the train station and I went to buy us tickets, but it turns out that all the trains today had been cancelled, except for the first and last. And the last wasn't due for another several hours. She suggested we bike to the next town and see if we could get a train there. We had no idea why the trains had been cancelled; neither, it seemed, did several other Frenchies waiting for the same train. I didn't talk to them, but they were surprised when the ticket lady made a general announcement about the lack of trainage.

So we biked to St. Raphael. The train station there was muuuch bigger. I tracked down a ticket lady and talked to her... to find out that the reason there were no trains was because of a strike! The local train workers were on strike! That's also probably why there was no train service from Aix to Marseille a few days ago, though I can't be sure. So what the SNCF (France's train company) did was to conscript TGVs into local service, since the TGV workers are apparently under a different union. TGVs are their super-fast bullet trains... they hold the global land-speed record for in-service trains. They also don't allow bikes on TGVs. So I brought that up with the ticket lady, and she said we'd have to ask the conductor and it would be up to him. But it was too far to Nice for us to make it there... so if we wanted to get there this was our only option.

So I bought us tickets, and we went and hung out at a cafe, then by the ocean, for the 2 hrs we had to wait for the next TGV with seats. If you can believe it, I broke a toenail while waiting... I kicked my bag and I was wearing sandals.... ow. But I digress. The train pulled up, and 15000 people tried to cram on it all at once. It was like 15 cars long, and everyone had assigned seats (including us) except our bikes. So I ran to a conductor and asked what to do with the bikes, and he was like "no way you can get bikes on here". And I was like, "but we bought tickets! The ticket lady said we could and that you'd help us!" This was all in French, of course. Thank god we weren't in Paris... the southern French are super-nice and he offered to find a spot for the bikes. We ran all the way to the end of the train, and he opened a crazy side door and helped us toss our bikes in. We then left them alone (eeek!) and found our assigned seats. All this took far longer than it was supposed to and the entire train ended up waiting for us. Oops.

But the good news is that we made it! And the ride was super-smooth, albeit slow. We got to Nice and found the conductor to help us pull our bikes off, then saddled up and rolled down to our hotel (which was pre-booked). The woman working the front desk was a gorgeous black French woman... which is weird to see for some reason. I apparently have a bias that the US is the only Euro-derived country that should have Asian and African minorities. Weird, huh? Anyways, we locked up our bikes and then wandered to the beach.

The beach is all rocks, so not so comfy. Dan and Ben swam, and then we walked town. There's a huge-ass rambla here with tons of shops and restaurants, which I hadn't seen last time I was here in 98. After some wandering we went back to shower and change, and then we walked the rambla. We got some dinner doner kebaps, some cafe, some gelato (I think), and walked around drunk. I had pounded a "Maximator" before dinner... which is a beer with 11% alcohol in a half-liter can. omg... wow. I was happy. We got back and slept... but not before watching German-dubbed American Dad and Family Guy, which are shown on MTV. Weird, but perfect for my state of mind at the time. =P