Monaco - A Second Digression

So, before I get to Venice, I have to share the story of how we came to visit Monaco, and it all has to do with the French. To quote a train employee in Rome, “always problems with the French. It's always problems with the French. Every day we have problems with the French.” That pretty much sums up our early morning experience trying to get out of Nice. We booked our train reservations from Lyon clear through to Rome before we left the US, and up until this point (and in fact afterwards as well) we hadn't had any difficulties whatsoever. All of our trains had been exactly where and when they were supposed to be.

For a little bit of background, our ride from Nice to Venice already looked like it was going to be our longest travel day of the entire trip. Our first train was supposed to leave Nice at 7:53 am which would get us to Venice (after changing trains twice) just after 4:30pm. Being slightly neurotic about making sure that we caught our trains, we were in fact at the train station shortly before 7am. We checked that there was in fact a train with the number we had been told, leaving at the time we had been told and settled down to wait. About 7:20, it occurred to me that our train only said it was going as far as Monaco, not all the way through to Italy. After looking at the timetable I realized that that probably was in fact the case. I consulted the French train official only to have him take one look at my ticket at say “Yes, yes! Platform E, now, go!” Keep in mind that this is approximately 7:22. I sprint across the lobby, grab Nick and our bags and we race along the underpass to the platform, arriving just in time to see the train disappear around the bend.

What we then figured out, given the chance to breathe, was that the train we had been originally told to get on did not in fact go all the way to where it was supposed to go, but rather we needed to change trains in Monaco, and that the last train that would get us into Italy in time to make the switch to our next two trains had just disappeared around the bend. Disappointed, annoyed, and despairing of getting to Venice anytime in the near future, we hopped on the next train to Monaco, slated to arrive at 8:10, where the train we needed to catch was scheduled to leave Monaco at 8:08.

Half an hour later, we pulled into the platform in Monaco, and I noticed that across the way was a train that a great many people were trying frantically to board that looked suspiciously like the train we had initially meant to catch. I grabbed Nick and we dashed across the platform, managing to muscle our way in just before the doors swished closed. It wasn't until we got to the next stop and I could compare the name to our timetable that I we even knew that we had gotten on the right train. Thus, by the grace of the train gods, and perhaps the gods of luck that hold sway over Monaco, Nick and I made a negative two minute train transfer and managed to get to Venice right on time.

So, no pictures from Monaco. We weren't there long enough, and what I saw looked exactly the same as the inside of any other underground train station. Hopefully someday I'll get to see more of it. With that, on to Venice!