Toulouse.

Leaving Barcelona was an experience. Ariane left for Bilbao, I left for Bordeaux. It was an early morning and the coffee was strong on my tongue but did nothing for my head. Eyes like lead slabs under lead slabs. Something was up with my Eurail Pass, the ticket inspector said in his Spanish way, 100 Euro fine. I wanted to cry but I didn't. I explained it was not I who had changed the dates on the pass, it was the woman in Dublin who had validated it back in August. He did not understand me…

Thank God for thos American girls, they were my saviours. Holly spoke fluent Spanish, she pleaded y case and although you could tell he still did not believe me, he let me off without a fine. In the end I didn't even end up paying for a new ticket, they just let me off without a word at Narbonne where we all got off. We all ended up having coffee and spent that whole day travelling together to Bordeaux. Holly from Texas, Kat from Giorgia, Laura from Seattle. Nicest girls ever, we had the funniest day on those godforsaken trains, we ate petit ecolier biscuits and laughed as one French woman who for some reason couldn't stand our talking and so proceeded to call us "b****es" in French (PUTAINS! PUTAINS!) and kick poor Laura's seat. Ah, good times.

Our 5 hour stopover in Toulouse was also an interesting experience. We walked around in the spitting rain for somewhere to eat, everything was either closed or rejected us, we were at a loss until an extremely cute young French dude took pity on us and said "would you like me to show you into town? This is the prostitute area…" So we gladly took him up on the offer, he had lived in Bondi for a year previously so was happy to meet an aussie. We ended up finding a place that agreed to serve us lunch even though they were only open for dinner but they could only serve us something quick and easy, this random old guy who was talking to us outside the restaurant ended up ordering for us so when we sat down we had no idea what we were in for…It ended up being Moules frites, a giant bucket of mussels (EACH may I just add) with chips, which was the most hilarious and nauseating meal I have eaten in a long time. Hilarious because we all had a bit of a hard time keeping them down and because we were trying to seem appreciative in front of these lovely people we couldn't help laughing at our attempts to act enthused at the vagina-resembing mussel concoction…ewwwww (but also hahaha).

Didn't really see much of Toulouse as you can gather, but it was a fun day nonetheless, albeit a bit stressful.