Prague to Moissac

Friday, 9 October

Another travel day, which didn't go totally according to plan. Lorraine and I parted at Terminal 1 of Prague airport, she to fly home via Dubai and me to fly to Toulouse via Frankfurt from Terminal 2. So far, so good. Hopefully Lorraine is well on her way by now.

Apart from short delays for both flights it was all good to Toulouse, where I knew I had a very short time to get to my train. The luggage took ages to come through and the taxi rank was quite a distance from where I exited the Toulouse terminal. The taxi driver quickly understood that I was in a hurry to get to the station and did his best through peak hour and stopping for red lights. By the time I got to the station I had less then 10 minutes to buy a ticket and find the train. First problem was a system in the ticket hall that I didn't understand, then a ticket machine that was only for a special kind of card. Some nice young girls explained and showed me the other ticket machine. I went out to that and fortunately was able to select English and buy my ticket.

By now very little time till the train was due to depart so I rushed to the big departures board and found the train leaving at 19.21 from platform 2. Down the stairs and along the tunnel then up more stairs to platform 2 where a train was waiting. I jumped onto it and asked someone if it went to Moissac. they pointed at the little screen which lists stations. I couldn't see Moissac there so asked a guy on the platform who said it did go to Moissac. No time to check further as the train pulled out but I had a bad feeling about not seeing Moissac listed. Grabbed the conductor when he came by and sure enough, it was the wrong train and going in the opposite direction. His advice was to get out two stops along and catch the next train back to Toulouse, which would mean about an hour's wait.

I hopped off and found the bus station outside with a bus ready to depart. So journeyed back to the main station of Toulouse by bus, with a little help from a lady who showed me how to go below ground through the Metro to get back into the station.

As the 19.21 was the last train to Moissac I switched to Plan B and caught a taxi to Moissac. Very expensive but worth it when I met Rob and Judy in a little cafe near the Abbey. We had a lovely meal and walked back to the boat - Clairac, the boat Lorraine and I had on our first trip. It's great to be tucked up in bed after a day with three countries and 5 forms of transport.

Posted with Blogsy