Three Trains to Spain

I took three different trains, transferring once and completely changing stations for the third one. I also had to take a shuttle bus, a city tram and a taxi to make it but, I did. I also met four French railway cops and got an escort to my last high-speed leg to Barcelona.

Monte Carlo is too rich for my blood. The average annual income is $158,000 and it has more millionaires and billionaires than anywhere else on earth. It also has more yachts and absolutely no income tax.It was also the starting point of my train trip.

The station is new, expansive, and expensive. I tried to make the 07:49 to Nice with a 07:00 landing at the pier. I thought I could make it because the station was close to the cruise ship terminal. I was at the embarkation deck at 06:50 when the Monaco Customs Agent came aboard. Damian, the ship's General Manager, tried to help speed up the clearance process but it was 07:20 before I was allowed to go ashore.

Supposedly it was a 10 minute walk but, they forgot to mention it was all uphill.  Not just a little hill either.  I humped until about 07:40 because I wasn't there yet (I could see it) but, I obviously wasn't going to get there, buy a ticket and find my track in under ten. There were trains all over the place leaving for cities all over Europe. 

Leaving on the 07:49, with quicker connections would have got me into Barcelona at about 16:30. I waited for the 6174 at 09:33 which went to Marseilles-St. Charles instead of Nice as I had originally planned.  This was my back-up plan. Three hours later at Marseilles I transferred to the 4764 to Montpelier Sud de France. I had a two hour lay-over in which I had to transfer to the station on the other side of town to catch the TGV to Barcelona. I walked a half mile down to a city bus which dropped me off in town at a tram-stop and I took the tram to the SNSF terminal downtown.

While waiting there I saw four serious looking cops walking through the main terminal and I could see from their shoulder patches that they were railway police. I stopped them and started up a conversation. They seemed delighted to meet me changing from die-hard cops to members of the family.

As usual, we compared railroad policing. Their stories seemed most like ours in the U.S. They have freight burglaries, vandalism, fights, tagging and spray-painting.  They also have drug movement and with recent current attacks in France, a much higher level of vigilance and preparing for terror attacks.

I gave them a couple of UP police patches and the agent next to me in the photo took off the velcroed patch from his shoulder and gave it to me. I told him he didn't need to do that.  He said, "no, no, no. We are French and we must return a gift with a gift!" My train was soon to depart so they escorted me down to the tracks, shook hands and gave me kisses on my departure. Via la France.

Monte Carlo

Monte Carlo Train Station

Montpellier Station

This is what 200 mph looks like.

I settled into the TGV - Train a Grande Vitesse and soon we going 320 kph or 200 mph. It was very smooth and quite on welded rail. The only clicky-clacks were on the very infrequent cross-over switches. It was too hard to take photos except things at a distance and by the time you saw anything interesting - it was gone.

Pyreness Mountains just before entering Spain

A lot of the train ride was right along the coast of the Med.

Some freight railroad along the way.

Once I got into Barcelona, checked into my hotel only a couple blocks away, across a large traffic circle from were my ship, the Insignia, would come in the next day. Location and price were everything.  The room was smaller than my cabin on the ship but, it had a bed, a shower and a toilet.  What else do you need for one night?