August 21st, 2007
I am back. It’s a totally tourist trip this time. We took national express night coach to Paris, which I strongly don’t recommend. I don’t think I am going to take it again. I was famous for sleeping well in the coach or train. For this one, I reckon it’s either comfortable or friendly. I have been waked up several times in the journey, while my friend stayed up all the time. Checking passport at midnight. Especially on our way back to London, the heater in the coach almost killed me. It’s a pig year, but I don’t want to be cooked! We didn’t get a glimpse of Paris early in the morning when we got there; we travelled by underground and changed to VTG to Lyon. Lyon is a beautiful city. We were there for lunch and had a look at the church at the mean time. The food is marvelous, but I forgot the name. I should have it written down somewhere. Then we made a worst decision – got on a slow train to Nice. It was a six hour journey in a sauna room. This train has no air conditioner and the carriage is stuffed with people. I was continuously sleeping, but had awful dreams I never had. I dreamed the dormitory steaming hot back in Beijing – sitting in my bed with a cool wet towel around my neck. This hasn’t occurred to me for a long time. I was fortunately that I still could fall asleep. I think all the people in the carriage have been staring at me all the time. I was waked up by them once. My immediately action was to find the ticket out, but it was a trolley for food. Everyone laughed. I was flashed and went back to sleep again. After we got to Nice, it’s almost dark. We walked a bit and found a small hotel for one night. Both of us were rather tired after 7 hours in the shaking coach and another 8 hours in the sauna train. We had a nice dinner and looked forward to tomorrow. We were going to stay in Nice for another night. Neither of us wanted to stay in the same hotel. It’s cheap and near to the train station. S thought it’s too noisy in the morning while I thought it looked a bit dodgy there.
