| A beautiful view of Lake Como and the surrounding mountains taken from Bellagio.. |
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| Glenn's Lake Como Journals 06-21-02 (Continued) Now we could relax. Our first few questions of a lady working the newspaper stand included where were the internet cafes and the information booth. Well we are in a small town and, true to form, the information booth was 4 kilometers away in the main part of town near the beach. The young lady was not familiar with any internet cafes in town. Oh well, our first stop was for food. We found a little cafeteria across from the train station where we had sandwhiches and pizza. After liunch we asked again about an internet cafe and she sent us up the street. As we walked only 50 meters up the street we found a bar that had the USA vs Germany World Cup Soccer game on and it was in the second half, USA down 1-0. We sat and watched the rest of the game (USA lost 1-0) while Erin enjoyed a beer. Now it is around 3:30 pm and we asked the bartender (who could speak English) where the internet cafe was. He sent us in the other direction towards the library which had internet capability. As we walked towards the library we ran across the local post office. We had some postcards that we needed to mail in Spain (already had Spain stamps on them) but had run out of time to mail them during our quick exit from San Sebastian, and Spain. We bought new stamps (French) and mailed them from Hendaye. I wonder if anyone will notice!!! Our next stop was the library where we found out that internet access for non-locals required a phone card and cost 20 cents per minute. We quickly passed on the idea, asked aobut another internet cafe (which was way across town) and ended up sitting in the library while I read my book and Erin worked on journals. The library closed at 6:30 pm so we had to leave. The gentleman at the library was nice enough to provide us with a map of Hendaye. This helped as we identified a park nearby where we could spend a few hours relaxing while we waited for our train departure at 11:15 pm. At the park we met a retired couple that were traveling by motorhome through France and Italy. Hendaye was one of there more common stops as they had been retired for almost 10 years and traveled quite frequently through this area. We chatted with Roy and Gretchen for more than an hour. We shared stories aobut our travel experiences while passing the time. They were a very neat couple who made passing the time very pleasant. We provided them our website information just in case they make it to the USA and are interested in visiting. We said our goodbyes around 9:15 pm.. Dinner was next on the agenda as we needed to eat pretty well before we took our long train ride. You never know when you will have your next meal. We stopped at a pizza place (actually a garage area that had ovens to make pizzas)and ordered a large pizza and a couple of sodas. The pizza was very good as we ate just sitting on some stairs right across from the pizza place. We finished dinner and ended up at the train station around 10:15 pm.. The train was already at the station so we validated our tickets and got on board around 10:45 pm.. The train left at 11:15 pm and our particular car was almost empty. Erin and I took seats in a four seat section where we could lay across two seats. Erin did pretty well sleeping on the train (she got about 5 ours sleep) while I stayed up most of the night and got about 3 hours sleep. We arrived in Paris around 6:00 am.. |