The weather had been okay in Paris, I mention the weather as I was hoping it was going to be good so that we'd see the impressive French/Italian Alps. As we headed past the flat agricultural fields of France the clouds started showing up, last year we'd been lucky to see how impressive the alps were but I had a feeling we werent going to be so lucky this time. The mountains start popping up once you head towards Chamberey. In Winter it would be very busy here with people heading for the ski slopes, as it is it's pretty quiet. The train was fuller than last year, that's because we're in the last couple of weeks of the Summer Season, so there's still back packers heading south. It's quite a long train ride from Paris to Milan and will take you about 7 hours, but it's pretty cheap, costing about £45 per person. After we'd stopped at Modane, which is the last station in France, we then headed to the Buffet Carriage to take in the views. They've got windows in the upper part of the carriage here, so you can get yourself a beverage and take in the scenery. It's still impressive but the only downside that the weather wasnt so great and so we didnt see it's full majesty as clouds were covering some of the largest mountains.

The last few hours were not the most interesting, this year Italy's farmers are growing Sweetcorn....lots of them. Very good but there were fields and fields of them. There wasnt a great deal going on, the only thing of note was the studied ignorance of the lady working behind the buffet counter, she was great, she made everyone wait and remained unflustered as the queues built up. Order a drink and she'd walk away from you, after you eventually got served she would consult her calculator to get the price.......I would like to award her with the most disinterested person award of the trip. I saw her last year and thought her rude, this year she'd mastered the art of ignorance personified.

As we headed into the outskirts of Milan, the train stopped, there'd been an accident we were told and could be a while. After being on a train for along time everyone was itching to get off and get on their way. A young American girl came up to us and asked us if we thought she'd be able to make her connecting train to Venice from Milan Central Station...it was 6.30pm..... I told her that it was going to be a bit of a dash as even if we started moving it would take 10 minutes to get in to Garibaldi Station and then 20 minutes by taxi uptown to Central Station......the guard also said the same thing..... We did start moving but there was no way she was going to make it. We told her to speak to the Guard as apparently the train company in Italy will take care of hotels etc if you miss connections. The American traveller confirmed this with us as this had been the case for the last week as she'd missed every connection. We told her we knew the feeling.....eventually we rolled into Milan.....early evening is a good time to roll into Milan. We like Milan.