It’s early Monday morning and we have just arrived here in Dijon, France. it’s 6.35am. The train from Venice, called the Thello, departed Venice at 8pm last night. We were booked into a 6 berth sleeper but we had paid for 4 of the seats so we only had to share with 2 others.
They boarded in Milan so we had the cabin to ourselves for 3 hours and I had actually fallen asleep when the lights went on and the door opened. We had pulled out the chairs so that the 6 bunks were set up.
It wasn’t very comfortable or quiet and the loos were, shall we say tragic? Gross is another word. They were also locked half the time (I believe they empty onto the tracks, yeuw.).
Enough about that!

The steward took our passports at the start of our trip so that she could deal with customs in Switzerland and France during the night which was good. I’m not happy handing my passport over and out of sight but I had read about this online and sure enough just before Dijon she gave them back.

We alighted into much cooler temperatures here in Dijon. It’s 20° and forecasting rain today and we have some jobs to do. I booked a hotel by the railway station, the same one we stayed in last year but we can’t check in until midday so we left our bags there and have been wandering the streets of the old part of town.

We are looking for a laverie automatique (laundromat) today as we both packed lightly which means all are clothes are dirty! Also we are hoping to buy a wireless prepay Internet thingy so that we can access the Internet, emails etc on the boat. We have located an Orange office (telecom here) which opens at 10am. That should be interesting! I’ve used my French to speak to the hotel and to order food today but hmmm not sure about the French word for ‘wireless prepay Internet thingy’!