Hello!
I haven't updated this for a while, because things have been pretty busy! I am currently in Bled, Slovenia, and don't want to make this a hugely long post and hog the hostel's computer, but I do want to give a quick update as to my time in Europe so far.
Joe and I set out for our Interrail trip on the 19th of May from East Midlands airport. The Ryanair flight was an experience - they try to sell you things every ten seconds of flight time. We landed in Barcelona and set off finding our hostel! Barcelona was pretty good - we had three days there which was definitely enough time there, but we were sad to leave our hostel - HelloBCN was brilliant, central, cheap, clean, secure and friendly. Man, it was kind of bad to start off our trip with such a great hostel because in comparison everywhere else had a lot to live up to! In Barcelona we visited La Sagrada Familia - a huge cathedral that's been under construction for like 200 years or something and isn't due to be finished until 2080, we ate chorizo, drank San Miguel, walked along the beach, and climbed up a huge hill to a fort.
Leaving Barcelona we had our first Interrail experience with our very first train trips. We stopped en route to the station to buy fartons - these delicious doughnut-y pastry things - and therefore missed our train to Montpellier. We were stuck with no more train times, and when we looked at later trains they were all booked up or we had to pay a huge reservation fee. After having a bit of a panic, we asked at the information desk and spoke to a very helpful man who even printed out the next train times for us and told us that we wouldn't need to pay a fee. We hung around the station, bought a huge bottle of water that we christened 'the whopper', and then got on our first interrail train!
Our hostel in Montpellier was pretty disappointing compared to HelloBCN. We stayed in the HI hostel, the only one in Montpellier, which meant I had to buy a HI card to be able to stay there. For only €11 it's worth it, because I've used it a couple of times since in places that you can only stay in if you have one. Despite booking a dorm room, we were given our own room with two beds in, which was brilliant because we could just dump all our stuff on the floor without worrying about being messy and getting in other people's way. We spent that afternoon/evening exploring Montpellier - the sun was glorious and the buildings there are beautiful. Unfortunately, the hostel only had a microwave so we were a bit stuck for food to do - ended up having lasagne that was horrible.
We then moved onto Nimes, which we loved! The hostel we stayed in was another HI one, and we decided to camp, as they had a facility where they provided a tent and blankets etc and you could camp in the little wooded area by the hostel. It was a fair trek from the station/town to the hostel, and involved a lot of hills (I don't like hills, especially not with a big backpack), but it was a lovely little place. I used my French with the hostel lady which was good, and we dumped our stuff and then explored Nimes. It's just so beautiful. We sat down on a quiet little street at a cafe and had drinks - the atmosphere was lovely. That night, however, was not. We were SO COLD. Literally freezing. Neither of us got very much sleep, and we kept falling down 'the abyss' - the cold gap between our air beds.
There was no check out time for campers at the hostel, so we decided to make the most of that by visiting Pont du Gard that morning. We got on a bus there, and paid to get in, which wasn't too expensive. Unfrotunately we were both in pretty bad moods due to the horrible night before, and also only had just over an hour there before the bus back to Nimes. You didn't really need much longer there, it's not like there's tons to do. We got off the bus and then raced up the hills to our hostel, grabbed our bags and raced back down to the train station. The train we got was supposed to get us in at 11pm, which was pretty awful. Still, we had booked a night at Nice, so we knew we had somewhere to stay. Unfortunately, our train was held up while we were on it. We didn't arrive in Nice until about 1.30am, and then had to phone the hostel for directions. Joe tried, because I was in a terrible mood and had slept for most of the delayed part if the train journey, but the man only spoke French so I had a go. We eventually found our hostel and checked in - I managed to communicate fine with the man which was a good feeling to end the pants day! We crashed into bed at about 3am, and decided we'd just ask in the morning about booking an extra night or two so that we could actually see Nice/Monaco/Cannes. Why had we ever thought just one night there would be enough? In the morning though, things got even more pants. Our hostel (which seemed lovely, even at 3am) and all hostels in the surrounding area were completely booked up. Why? The Monaco Grand Prix, happening that weekend. Woops, we missed that one!
We were pretty fed up that we weren't going to get to see Nice at all, or Cannes or Monaco - which would have been even more awesome to see while the Grand Prix was on - but we regrouped and decided to leave France behind and go to Italy instead. The beauty of a flexible interrail pass, hey?! We booked for two nights at Pisa to recover and chill out for a little bit, also realising that we needed to slow down our pace a bit, and then we set off that day, having spent a grand total of just three nights in France.
Things we learnt:
1. Always have directions from the station to your hostel.
2. Use the Deutsche bahn website. It is all you will ever need.
3. Get the next train's times, just in case you miss yours.
4. Book hostels with kitchens - it's harder than it sounds to do without.
5. If you want a day somewhere, you need to book two nights there.
I will continue with our adventures in Italy in the next post!
