Jim & Happy : French rail saga continues…

Melinda, the homeowner of our Larocal housesit suggested we should visit the town of Grasse while we are in Eze. I Googled Grasse - it is known as the perfume capital of the world and then remembered Patrick Suskind’s novel ‘Perfume’. Both Jim and I have read the book and seen the movie adaption ‘Perfume: The Story of a Murderer’ while I was working at the Mt Beauty Library. Based on the book and the movie Grasse seemed worthy of a visit. Anyway, the easiest and most direct route is to catch the train from Eze to Grasse - via Nice & Cannes, an hour and a quarter one-way trip.

On Wednesday we were ready to brave the trains again. Surprise surprise! The ticket machine at Eze was still out of order – no worries we were prepared to approach the conductor ON the platform to purchase our tickets. The conductor doesn’t speak English but he understands what we are saying and we understand enough of what he is trying to tells us - sit behind his door and buy our tickets after Nice. We arrive at Nice and he packs up and gets off the train. Jim and I look at each other in a mild state of panic and say ‘what do we do now’ but it is okay he is explaining to the conductor who is taking over from him about us (we assume because he is pointing at us, smiling and winking). The new conductor hops on and says he can’t sell tickets, as his computer is not working. Jim is calm and says great ‘they owe us 70 Euros’. My concern is the ticket police are going to board the train at every station and we would have to drag the conductor out to verify our story. It all ended okay, arriving in Grasse the conductor waved us goodbye so we did get the trip for free, it should have been 20 Euros but it wasn’t a relaxing trip. The return trip was more relaxing as the ticket office was open and we purchased our tickets prior to getting on the train.

The old town (village centre) of Grasse was a steep climb up from the railway station. It was cute with the typical French of old, rocky windy narrow streets now full of shops and a few perfume museums with shops attached. Needless to say we didn’t’ buy any perfume but it was interesting to visit the town and we visited one museum. That night we downloaded the free version of the movie Perfume and watched it again. It was surprising how much Grasse featured in the movie, I’d forgotten.

On Thursday morning Nicola, our apartment owner informed us the train and buses will be on strike Thursday and Friday but there will be a limited timetable. She says this is normal for France. The railways often strike on Thursday and Friday so they can have a long weekend then the buses go out because they feel overworked due to the extra load of passengers from the train strike. Another interesting thing that happens in France that I think is a good thing, they have ‘jour rouge’ – red days. The government declares red days throughout the year. On these days the electricity usage can be charged up to 9 times the normal rate between the hours of 6am and 10pm. It is to make people and in particular businesses more aware of their usage. Most householders do not wash or use their dryers on these days and some businesses even close for the day. This week it ran from Monday to Thursday, lucky it went back to normal today we were running out of undies and I only hand wash in India and if Jim had to hand wash he would just go without.

Today, Friday another sunny day. We walked from Eze to Ville Franche-Sur-Mer beach. It only took an hour and that was at a slow pace. There was one restaurant/café opened on the beachfront. We thought it would be nice to enjoy a drink in the sun but 2 coffees was going cost 9 Euros ($12). We could have paid it but thought no, that is a silly waste of money.

Tomorrow we plan to visit Monaco. The buses will be back to normal and it is only a 15-minute bus ride. We don’t plan on doing anything special in Monaco like visit the casino. We'll wander around and look at things as we do.

Sunday will be a big day on the train as we make our way back to Larocal. We leave the apartment at 9am and arrive back in Larocal about 10.30pm.

Will write again early next week when we are back with Lola & Fizz.