Crossing borders

A few years ago, while planning a trip, I needed to go from Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain to Bayonne in France ( Where the heck is Bayonne?). I was to walk part of the camino from St Jean Pied de Port (France) to Santiago de Compostela but decided not to. I did want to see Santiago de Compostela and St Jean, the starting and ending points of the camino. So I flew into Santiago and now I want to take the train to Bayonne, France and from Bayonne, go to St Jean. I logged on to www.voyages-sncf.com to check on the trains, I already know that the train from Santiago will take me to Hendaye, France. Hendaye is the border town between Spain and France, then from Hendaye, I need to take another train to Bayonne. It's going to be a 12th hours kind of trip. While checking on the train times, I started answering questions (all in French because I didn't realize I could translate the page, so silly) and I gave them my credit card number, so silly again. After I finished all that, I told myself that I think I just bought a train ticket on the Internet, I didn't even know if the French people is going to mail the ticket to me. They did, I was so amazed, the ticket for the sector between Hendaye and Bayonne. I still couldn't believe it, even at the Hendaye station, I had to ask the train officials if the ticket was 'bon' (good). I did finally reach Bayonne at almost midnight, from Bayonne, one takes another train up the Pyrenees to St Jean. I stayed the night in Bayonne, everybody kind of assemble in Bayonne, then take the train to St Jean and start their camino, a 500 mile walk to Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain. I had planned to walk the last 60 miles but didn't.

From that day on, I was on SNCF's mailing list. I get updates on train offers every so often. The new one says, Paris to Geneva for 20 euros or for 2 nights hotel and train for 211 euros. Wow, I wish I live in Europe. It is so easy to cross borders and get from one country to another. A friend was just in Eastern Europe, she said a short bus ride and you would have gone from the Czech Republic to Poland. It is amazing. The Spanish train rolled right into Hendaye which is actually France, there was a little metal fence that separated the train tracks and we passed it and was in France. When we took the train from the Cinque terre in Italy to Nice, France a few years ago, the Italian train stopped at the border in Ventimiglia, a French immigration official boarded the train to check passports to make sure we were legit travelers and not undocumented people. Then it went on, all the way into Nice. I was amazed to see the Italian train on the tracks in Nice, France. Wow!

The next trip, we'll be crossing a lot of borders and I'm really looking forward to it and the many other times I'll be crossing other borders in the future.