This is another long one...

I left Munich Sunday evening on a night train to Milan. It left at 9pm & wasn't scheduled to arrive in Milan until 8am the following morning. The day trains only take 7 hours to reach their destination & I wondered why the overnight trains take so much longer. I thought that maybe they just went slower, or stayed longer at each stop. Maybe some do, but my train went north, all the way up to Strasbourg, France, before heading south through Switzerland to Italy. I had a small "couchette", which is basically a flat bench. I'm short, so I could stretch out fully, but the couchette above me was so low that I couldn't actually sit up at all. This was the 2nd overnight train I've taken; the first was in Georgia, when a few of us took a train from Tbilisi to Batumi. On that train the benches were plastic (or made of some other slippery material), so with each stop (and there were many & most without any kind of warning, like a slowing down of speed, which usually happens when a train is coming to a stop) I had to try to grasp hold of something to stop from sliding off my bench into the middle of the car. That was quite the trip, and I didn't get much sleep, but this train ride was a little more gentle, so I was able to doze a bit.

Once I reached Milan, I had a 3 hr wait to catch my train to Nice. The Museo dei Balzi Rossi is right on the border with France, so I'm staying in Nice this week. Here's a photo from the station in Milan:



The train to Nice took ~5 hrs and stopped in Genova mid-way. The train was packed with people for that first half of the journey -- people were standing in the aisles & stealing seats the moment one was vacated. Trying to get all my stuff on to that train (and trying to find a place to put it once it was on) was the hardest thing I've had to do on this trip so far. I tried to be nice at first, saying "excuse me" ( in Italian, French, English & German) and "sorry" whenever I accidentally hit someone with a bag, but I gave up when it became apparent that nobody cared. Nobody would budge an inch to let me through (even when there was room to do so) and nobody bothered to do the same when they hit me in the head with a bag. So I just held on to my bags, looked directly ahead, & barreled through the crowd (not trying to hit anybody, but not stopping when I did) until I found a place to put everything and kicked the squatter out of my seat. The ride from Genova to Nice was beautiful. The train goes right along the Mediterranean coast (and right through the mountains at times.)

The next day I was scheduled to see the Upper Paleolithic skeletons in the Museo dei Balzi Rossi. There are 4 of them in the museum & they were all found in the Barma Grande caves directly above the museum. The museum is in Ventimiglia, Italy, which is the 1st town immediately across the border from France. I didn't have much in the way of directions to the museum, but I was told that it was only 500 metres from the Menton-Garavan train station and easy to reach on foot. Well, a French-Italian metre must be longer than a North American metre because it's actually a 30 minute walk (longer if you're dragging a big Pelican case with a computer, a shapecam, and a tripod.) The museum is not visible from the station, so I'm eternally grateful to the French or Italian (couldn't tell) guy who not only pointed me in the right direction, but helped me carry everything down the stairs.

The walk to the museum was absolutely gorgeous, and since I had to stop to rest every so often, I took pictures:



Here's one of the French-Italian border:



In-between gasping at all the prettiness, I was cursing the heaviness of the case & the lack of taxis anywhere in sight. When a wave came crashing up & over that wall you see, pretty much drenching both me & the shapecam (good thing the case is waterproof), I had to just stop & laugh at the situation I had gotten myself into. If any of you are planning on visiting this museum in the future, contact me first. I'll tell you to take a cab from the nearest large train station.

Everything was great once I got to the museum. The skeletons were still in their glass display cases though, so I had to wait for them to be removed. Everyone at the museum were really super wonderful & very interested in the shapecam. I had a little crowd around me the entire time that I was working, which was a little unnerving, but everything went fine.



After I was done with the photographing, I was able to go up & see the caves from which the skeletons were excavated. Here are a couple of the Grotta di Florestano:





After seeing the caves, I got a ride back to the station & made it back to Nice in one piece. I really miss the train stations in Germany; every single station that I saw in Germany had escalators and/or elevators, making it much easier to get up & down from the platforms. Traveling with so much stuff has really made me more aware of places that are not handicap-accessible! At this point I'm half-way through my trip. I don't know if I'm any stronger from carrying around so much stuff, but I can say with certainty that I am more bruised ;)

Vieux Nice:



The sea at Nice:



It's nice to be by water again.