Return of the Warrior or Trial by Train

We decided to go to the city of Antibes, south of Nice, another coastal town with supposedly a nice old town. I will be posting our story of our visit there and our pictures on my next post. But today we will take about how an old warrior returns to the battlefield and takes on challenges that appear will totally defeat him, only to rise up victorious!

The day started out innocently enough. Took the train down, had a little trouble buying our ticket because the ticket office was closed and we needed to use a machine. SCNF ((Société nationale des chemins de fer français), the national railway system, uses machines that are somewhat difficult to understand. But that was minor. We had got parking at the station and were in Antibes before you knew it.

After our long day there, we were ready to head back, so I said to Wife that we could catch a slightly earlier train. In fact I caught the wrong train which took me only to Nice directly. But no problem we'd wait for the local to show up and finish up on the right train. This is when things began to get squirrelly. On all the screens in the terminal, no track numbers were being listed for any of the trains. 

We're assuming it will be on the same track but that track is filled with trains that are just sitting there. I run around the station trying to figure out what's going on. I notice that a train arrives on another track going in the direction we want and let's off a bunch of passengers. Wife and I dash over to it (involving going down, underneath, and up). I look into the train and on its electronic displays, our station is announced. BUT, we are told by passengers getting of that everyone was told to get oof the train and no one working for the train could tell them why.

I'm smelling a rat, a juvenile, equine magical rat. I smelling the Magical Unicorn Pony God of Travel. Long time readers know I was the road warrior. And I had fought many a battle with the young horned horse demi-god. But that was a long time ago. I've retired. But things were spiraling from bad to worse. We tried to get information on when the next train would finally be going. The line at information was too long. We went to the toilet and when we got back we found the line short enough that we could ask our question. 

"Ha, Ha, No you are not going to your destination today. Someone attached a conductor on one of the trains at your station and now the train workers are refusing to take trains there. There will be no trains going their the rest of today. You need to catch a bus. Go across the street."

This we do. We wait in another line. Here they tell us, "Just go to the port and catch the bus 100." But how to get to the port? We go to tourist information. They give us a map and bus schedule. There is one bus that leaves in 35 minutes. The next one not for another two hours. We have to take the tram. We risk not having tickets for the tram because it is at the station waiting. Will we banned from another country for tram violations? No, we are successful.

We hustle our batoogies down to the port. But where in the port is the bus stop. Ah we find it fairly easily. But the line of people is humongous because of all the people who can't get where they are going by the train. And this is a local bus that will take hours to get to Menton AND THEN we still will be miles from where our car is parked. I can here the Unicorn God of Travel's laughter. 

But I have put back on the armor. I have resharpened my blade. I am ready. I check my Uber App. I find a trip between cities is not that terribly costly. I put in my request. The driver will be there in 5 minutes. We are on the road to Menton while the bus is still trying to get everyone on. The Magical Unicorn Pony God of Travel neighs horribly. We are back at our car in 50 minutes and in our house on the hill 15 minutes after that. 

We are victorious. We would still be traveling now as I write this if we had not made the Uber decision.