Part One here: When everything that can go wrong on a connecting flight does go wrong
Apart from the game itself, the day of the Ireland-Sweden match was largely uneventful. I made my way to the Eiffel Tower to see the fanzone to find the tower itself only open to tourists, and that the fanzone was on the far side of the tower. With time a premium, I got something to eat at a nearby café, and spoke with some American tourists who weren't really sure what was going on, before meeting some friends and taking the metro to the game. On the metro itself, some light conversation with an Irish man and his Swedish wife resulted in them selling their spare ticket to one of our party who was traveling to the game without a ticket. Irish ladies international Stephanie Roche was two rows down from me at the game, and I got a photo with her after the final whistle, which gave me the strange experience of telling someone I'd never met before that she follows me on twitter!
A day later, and having endured Hercules' first labour in getting to Paris, I figured that the second leg of my journey, a train from Paris' Montparnasse station to la Rochelle (a small seaside town about a 90 minutes drive north of Bordeaux) would be uneventful. But not so.
I arrived about two hours early to the station, both to find the correct platform and to get something to eat. The SNCF had emailed me to let me know that, despite the ongoing strike action my booking was safe, and the train was scheduled to leave on time, which I confirmed on the departures board. The station's relative quiet was periodically broken by striking workers in hi-vis vests with a megaphone to let everyone in the station know their grievances. I got a seat in one of the station's cafés and ordered a sandwich. I got talking to two Irish fans at the table beside me, and sold one of them my spare ticket for the Italy game. A friend of his was due to arrive in France later that week and had no ticket, so after a quick phone call to confirm his interest, I sold him the extra.
With 20 minutes to leave, I wandered over to the platform where the train was still scheduled to leave, and browsed on the free wi-fi until another Ireland fan in the station tapped me on the shoulder, and asked if I was also getting this train to Bordeaux, because it had been taken off the board!
After checking the board to find that, yes, it had been removed, I went to the information desk and found with my broken French that I could take the next train to Bordeaux about an hour later, and get a connecting train at Nior, instead of Angoulême as in my original plans, with the same ticket. Ok, not the worst change of plans I'd had to endure, even at this early stage of my trip, but another inconvenience.
One thing that struck me as odd was that the lady at the information desk was reading this off a printout, not on the screen on the computer at her desk. Working in the realm of realtime information has made me suspicious of printouts for a variety of reasons. How old was the printout? How did she know if it was still valid? Why was France's much-vaunted TGV still reliant on paper?
But the train left on time, with me on it, and I settled into watching one of the films I had added to my tablet before leaving. We arrived in Nior two hours later and followed the signs for the connection to la Rochelle to find it wasn't a train, but two coaches! I got on the first coach, which filled quickly, as did the second, and noticed that several Irish fans had been left standing outside the station. While I was thankful I was not among their number, I did wonder how they would continue on their journey.
The coach wound its way through the French countryside until we arrived at the train station in la Rochelle about an hour later. We were all a little surprised that there were no taxis at the station, but soon they arrived in ones and twos to take the weary travellers to their various destinations. I would learn that my hotel was actually about a 10-15 minute walk away, but after three days of traveling, broken by the self-inflicted stress of an Ireland game, I was happy to get a taxi.
The hotel itself was centrally located, and its owner cheerful with perfect English, so after leaving my luggage in the room, I left for a walk around the city centre (what I would learn is the "old" part of the town) to get something to eat and have a quiet drink.
After another day's travel disrupted by forces outside my control, surely now my issues were at an end? Not at all.
To be continued...
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