Always an Adventure!

Hi everyone! We are so close to being done, only a few more days! We can’t wait to come home, we will definitely miss France but we are so excited to see everyone! We wanted to just quickly update you on our trip back to Antibes from Venice. We wrote our last blog on the train headed back to France and soon after we finished writing it we once again ran into trouble! Traveling to and from France always seems to be an adventure for us for some reason! We had just gotten on our last train in Ventimiliga around 9:30, we made it with only a minute to spare, and a few minutes after leaving the station the train came to a stop. An announcement came over the loud speaker and once again the only thing we could understand was that they were experiencing technical difficulties. The power then went out in the entire train and after waiting a few more minutes another announcement was made. Even though we couldn’t understand what was said we decided to follow the others on the train and headed a few cars down. (We weren’t going to make the same mistake again of not following the crowd when an announcement was made on the train!) Everyone on the ten car train crowded into one car and we all sat together in complete darkness waiting for another announcement to be made.

A few minutes later a train attendant came and told that we had to get out of the car we were currently in because it was too dangerous. There were no stairs leading out of the car, but thankfully two nice French guys took our luggage for us and caught us as we jumped out of the train and onto the side of a cliff with the ocean far below. We then had to walk two cars down and get into a different car. Thankfully the same two French guys helped pull us into the car since there were once again no stairs. (Walking alongside a cliff on train tracks at 10:30 at night seemed more dangerous to us than sitting in the original car they told us to go to!) We all crowded into the car with only one flashlight for about forty of us and we waited about an hour before we were told we had to move a third time. This time we were told to leave the train completely. With our luggage we all had to climb a hill alongside the train tracks up to a highway above the cliff.

Once we finally all made it to the road we then had to wait for taxis to arrive to drive us all to our destinations. We were told that all power from Italy to France was out and no trains were able to move. The problem then was that they only have four taxis to drive everyone who was stuck on all of the trains, and they were starting with the people in France first. Since we were still in Italy we were the last ones to be picked up so we ended up waiting almost four hours on the side of the road in the dark and cold. Thankfully we met two very nice guys from Australia who took good care of us! They kept us entertained and gave us their jackets to wear and their sleeping bags to sit on and made sure we got in the first taxis available. Thank goodness we met them because Italy and the people still awake at 3:00 in the morning can be very scary!

After taking a taxi to Nice and then another taxi from Nice to Antibes we finally arrived back at our apartment around 3:30 in the morning. It was quite an entertaining evening to say the least, but it was still fun and we were able to meet a lot of nice people and we even got reimbursed ten Euros each from the train station! Hopefully our flight home won’t have any delays or problems! We are looking forward to seeing everyone; we will be home very soon! Hope everything is going well at home! We love and miss you!

Love, Jen and Em