One Day - Four Trains

Today (Friday) is the second of the two long travel days on this holiday. After breakfast we walked up to the railway station (Gare de Monaco). As Monaco is built into the side of a mountain almost any walk is up a hill, or down one. From the hotel to the station is a very steep climb, but due to Monaco’s use of exterior escalators, the distance can be covered without any great struggle. From the hotel we walk to Fontvieille port and up the first two escalators, then up another to the Prince Rainier park. We walked down hill through the Place De Armes and then to another three internal escalators and walkways until you reach the station.

Our first train, from Monaco to Nice, was due at 11.13 and arrived 7 minutes late, this was the busy commuter train like the one we had travelled in to Monaco from Ventimiglia (or Ventmille as the French call it) on Wednesday. This took 20 minutes to reach Nice and the Bordeaux train was directly across the platform from it. This is the train we were catching as far as Montpellier. As with the last long day’s travel we’d upgraded, for a small amount, to the First Class carriage (coach 12; seats 21 and 22), and this provided very comfortable seats as seen in Drew’s photo to the right.

We had lunch on the train, Drew having a foccacia with caesar salad and I had egg, bacon and tomatoes in a tortilla wrap.

The train arrived at Montpellier at 16:30 and we had an hour for which to wait for the TGV train from Montpellier to Figueres. Montpellier station is obviously going through some major renovations, the toilets were outside the main entrance in a portacabin, though it was a high quality portacabin kept clean by a formidable lady who charged 50c for the pleasure of using her facilities – well worth it. The train was a large one, a double-decker with 16 carriages. The front 8 were going to Figueres, the back 8 were stopping at Perpignan. This confused lots of folk, but luckily we had seen the electric screens which show where each coach is arriving at Monaco station, where it had not mattered to us, so were ready for them here. So we were standing just where coach 11 was due to be when it bulled in and we got in to two very spacious seats (31 and 32) for a comfortable journey from Montpellier to the French border and into Spain.  The train stopped at Narbonne and Perpignan before arriving at Figueres. The station it uses in Figueres (Figueres Vilafant) is out of the town, its main purpose is to decant passengers from French trains onto Spanish ones (as they have different gauge tracks). So our transfer time was only 16 minutes, but it was just a matter of walking across from one platform to another on the same level to catch the Spanish train to Barcelona.

The RENFE train was cool and comfortable we were on coach 3 in seats 123 and 124, next to each other. The train did not make good speed for Barcelona, stopping and starting along the way, though it only had two actual stops – Girona and Barcelona Sants. In fact while it left dead on schedule 7:56 p.m., it did not arrive in Barcelona Sants station until 40 minutes after its due arrival time at 10.25 p.m.

We had worked out in advance that we needed to catch line 3 of the metro and walked down to the metro station and bought a ticket for 10 journeys for each of us. This is a good deal at 9.50 euros compared to the 20 euros it would cost if we bought individual tickets for these journeys. I had read in advance on Trip Advisor that people have been caught out in the Barcelona metro as you put your ticket in the left slot and walk through the right turnstile, and just to prove it an American got this wrong in front of us. Putting her ticket into the slot and trying to move the left turnstile, which did not budge. She had to re-enter her ticket once she had worked it out.

We made our way towards Line 3 which is quite a walk underground, Drew was behind me when suddenly I was aware he had stopped. Looking back up the staircase I saw he was looking in his rucksack. Apparently someone had opened the top part of the bag from behind and Drew had sensed the motion and turned around when the guy ran off. Thankfully nothing was lost, but it was a reminder that just because we are in a country where we have a better understanding of the language than we did in Italy or France, we still need to beware of pickpockets. I’m not sure what the pickpocket thought as the top of that particular compartment of Drew’s bag is occupied by our travel companion Captain Jack, between him and a pickpocket I’d be on Jack’s side every time.

On arriving at Drassanes station we followed the exit marked La Rambla which brought us outside immediately opposite the street on which our hotel is located, and right in front of the statue to Christopher Columbus which dominates the bottom of the Ramblas. Walking through crowds of people enjoying their Friday night we came to the street entrance and after a short walk were at the hotel by 11.00. Check-in was simple and smooth so we were in the room by 11.05. I was hungry by now, so leaving Drew to unpack I headed back out and found a supermarket where I bought Jamon y Queso sandwich for each of us plus a bottle of Acqu con gas for me and Coke Light from Drew. By the time we had finished these it was after 12.00 and time for sleep.

It is amazing to think that we travelled 672 miles on Wednesday and another 462 today. You have to give it to the Italians, the 672 miles was travelled in a quicker time than the 462 due to their 300Km trains.

So it is now the end of a very long day, and I’m tireder now at the end of it than I expected, when all we had been doing was sitting down. But we are in an amazing City, so I’m sure tomorrow will revive us.