401 - Join Us in France Travel Podcast

Table of Contents for this Episode

Categories: Family Travel, France How To, Provence, Toulouse Area, Trains in France

Discussed in this Episode

Toulouse
Carcassonne
Montpellier
Marseille
Aix-en-Provence

[00:00:00] Intro

[00:00:00] Annie Sargent: This is Join Us in France episode 401, quatre cent un.

[00:00:22] Annie Sargent: Bonjour, I’m Annie Sergeant and Join Us in France is the podcast where we talk about France. Everyday life in France, great places to visit in France, French culture, history, gastronomy, but this week there will not be any news related to travel to France because I am on vacation. Today, I bring you a trip report with Kelly Young about her trip between Toulouse and Marseille. They went to five cities in 11 days, which is quite the feat and they used the train a lot. There were several of them, it didn’t always go smoothly because there were a few things that they didn’t quite understand. You will hear all about that, so you don’t make the same mistake.

[00:01:09] Annie Sargent: They had a lot of fun however, and they learned a lot, and so will you if you listen to this episode. But I do want to thank all the people who make this podcast possible. They are the ones who buy my products and services listed at my boutique, joinusinfrance.com/boutique or become patrons by going to Patreon.com/joinus P A T R E O N join us no spaces or dashes. Merci Beaucoup.

[00:01:49] Main interview

[00:01:49] Annie Sargent: Bonjour Kelly Young and welcome to Join Us in France.

[00:01:54] Kelly Young: Hello! Bonjour!

[00:01:55] Annie Sargent: How are you?

[00:01:57] Kelly Young: I am wonderful. I have an opportunity to talk about France, so I’m in a good mood.

[00:02:01] Annie Sargent: Excellent. So today we’re going to talk about a bit of a whirlwind trip that you had, and you hit a lot of different places very quickly. And we did an itinerary consult together and you wanted to do five cities over 11 days, but you actually wanted to do more than that, and I tried to talk you out of that because it was, you know, it was just too quick. And you went with your kids, right?

[00:02:28] Kelly Young: Yes. Mm-hmm.

[00:02:30] The group and how they planned the trip

[00:02:30] Annie Sargent: So tell us about the group and how you figured you were going to do this.

[00:02:34] Kelly Young: It was my husband and I, and I have three daughters, two of them came. My youngest who is 15, my middle daughter is 22, well, she was 22 at the time, and she brought her boyfriend along. So it was the five of us. I have always wanted to come to France, and it just was, you know, I’m like I’m not getting any younger, let’s just make this happen. And we actually had recently decided before that, we wanted to move to France. So I was like, let’s go over there and check out some cities and see which cities that we like the best so that we can come back in the summertime later that year, and spend time in like maybe one or two of our favorite cities.

[00:03:13] Hoping to move to France

[00:03:13] Annie Sargent: Oh, cool.

[00:03:14] Kelly Young: So that is what we did.

[00:03:16] Annie Sargent: So how many trips have you had to France, total? Was this your first, second, third?

[00:03:21] It was my first, my very first.

[00:03:23] Annie Sargent: Wow. Wow. Okay. Okay. I had forgotten that detail. Okay. All right. So, but you’re not retired yet, are you? You look too young.

[00:03:33] Kelly Young: Oh, no, no, I’m young. We’re planning on figuring out a way to get a visa so we can come over there and work. I actually listened to another podcast, and I believe I was actually surprised you were guest on her show, Allison Lounes with FranceFormation..

[00:03:49] Annie Sargent: Oh, yes. Yes.

[00:03:50] We plan on hiring her and having her help us figure out what to do, best visa to get over there so we can move and work and live in France.

[00:03:58] Annie Sargent: Oh, that’s great. That’s a really good idea. She’s very good at what she does. She gave me her book when we met in person, we had dinner once and it’s like a big old book. I mean, there’s a lot of information there. Allison Lounes is a really good resource for people who want to move because she’s not going to lead you astray and tell you what you want to hear, if it’s not real. She’ll make it real if it can happen. If you’re on the wrong track, she’ll set you straight. So, I really think that’s a very good way to go. And you have time, you don’t have to do this right away.

[00:04:28] Kelly Young: Exactly. We’re waiting till my youngest graduates from high school. So we’ve got a few years to figure it out.

[00:04:33] Didn’t visit Paris at all

[00:04:33] Annie Sargent: Okay. Very good. So, it’s strange because you came to France, but you didn’t really spend any time in Paris. You came to the South.

[00:04:41] Kelly Young: None at all.

[00:04:42] Annie Sargent: Okay. Why is that?

[00:04:46] I didn’t want to live in Paris. I knew I wanted to be in the South of France. Mediterranean had a huge draw, so I just started looking at cities that really didn’t know anything about it. I started doing some research. I did some Google searches and that’s actually how I came across your podcast, and I started listening to your podcast about different cities and you know, it was like, okay, Montpellier, Marseille.

[00:05:07] Kelly Young: And then I just started looking at like little towns, because we had originally wanted just little towns, maybe kind of, not too far from the beach or you know, the coast or maybe inland a little.

[00:05:19] Toulouse

[00:05:19] Kelly Young: And then after listening to your podcast, I was like, honey, I think we need to look at Toulouse too. Toulouse probably is a, you know, something we want to check out. So that’s just kind of, I just went to a map and looked at things, listened to your podcast and started deciding where sounded nice.

[00:05:35] Annie Sargent: Wow. Wow. So you decided to move to France before you started listening to the podcast, so this is something that you decided long ago.

[00:05:43] Annie Sargent: Yes.

[00:05:44] A determined person

[00:05:44] Annie Sargent: Wow. You are a determined person, so I think you’ll make it happen.

[00:05:48] Yeah, that’s what everybody says. They’re like you’ve got this like in the bag. I was like, yeah, I’m the type of person that once I decide I want something, I typically get it.

[00:05:56] Annie Sargent: You go get it. Yeah, that’s excellent. Yeah. You’re willing to do the work and go get it. That’s awesome.

[00:06:02] Flew into Toulouse

[00:06:02] Annie Sargent: All right, so you came to Toulouse but you didn’t land in Toulouse, did you?

[00:06:06] Kelly Young: We did, we flew into Toulouse. So Toulouse is my first impression of France and we absolutely fell in love, fell in love with Toulouse.

[00:06:15] Kelly Young: Well, do tell, do

[00:06:16] Annie Sargent: tell because you know, I’m from here. So I am enjoying this.

[00:06:18] Kelly Young: Yes. Oh, it’s just such a beautiful city. That’s where actually one of the cities we’ve chosen to come back to this summer. We landed at the airport and, you know, being from America and flying in big cities, I was, you know, international, I’m thinking it’s this huge airport. It’s not a very big airport.

[00:06:33] Annie Sargent: Nope.

[00:06:34] Mirror Doors

[00:06:34] Kelly Young: But, you know, the funny story, we get off and we’re coming out, we get our baggage and there’s a place where you exit where there’s mirror doors, and we were so jet lagged, so tired. We didn’t know it was a door and we just kind of stood in front of it. So someone else looked at us like we were nuts and walked up to it and it opened, and I was like, okay, we’re jet lagged.

[00:06:58] Careful when you arrive and are jet lagged

[00:06:58] Annie Sargent: You are, and that’s really important to realize when you travel. When you arrive, you’re happy to be there, you’re excited to be there, but your brain’s not working quite right. Be careful, don’t kill yourself or don’t get your stuff stolen right away, because that’s like, it’s prime time for accidents and for mishaps is when you first land.

[00:07:19] Kelly Young: Yes, very much so. And then I was thankful we had the hotel, had a taxi waiting for us, which was very helpful. We stayed at Le Grand Balcon, which is a lovely little hotel, lovely staff, loved everything about it. We ended up with a room looking right over the Capital Square.

[00:07:39] Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:39] Was just, just lovely.

[00:07:41] And then the taxi, once you get into the old city, you know, we’d never been to European city, so it’s like, you know, the little taxis on the road with all the people and I’m like, oh my God, he’s going to hit him, he’s going to hit him, he’s going to hit him. Nope, he doesn’t hit him.

[00:07:54] La Place du Capitole

[00:07:54] Kelly Young: So that was a, you know, white knuckling, a little bit. I was like, oh gosh. Yeah, so, you know, we got to our hotel and we ended up going out to dinner at a cute little Italian restaurant right there on thePlaza, or I don’t know what to call ’em.

[00:08:08] Annie Sargent: la Place du Capitole.

[00:08:09] Kelly Young: Place du Capitole, there we go.

[00:08:11] Tour of Toulouse with Elyse

[00:08:11] That’s pretty much all we did that night. We were tired, went to sleep and then we had hired Elyse to do a tour of Toulouse the next day.

[00:08:19] Annie Sargent: Oh, nice.

[00:08:20] Kelly Young: Yeah, so we met her and she took us all over, she took us to the Victor Hugo, the Halles of Victor Hugo, and showed us all this yummy food and wonderful market.

[00:08:32] Kelly Young: And I was just like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I could live here, I could, I could do this.

[00:08:37] Annie Sargent: Yes. Where else did she took us to, Saint-Sernin, which was just my first church I’ve ever seen that looked anything like that, and I was just awestruck. I was like, oh my gosh, this is so beautiful, and I just love her stories, I would recommend anybody who wants to hire tour guide, I just love Elyse. We’re actually, my husband and I are talking about what we want to do this summer, and we’re going to see if we can actually hire her again to do something else.

[00:09:02] Annie Sargent: Yeah, she’s really good. She puts on a good tour and she knows Toulouse inside and out and not just Toulouse, all the Southwest area. She’s really good at it.

[00:09:12] A lot of walking

[00:09:12] Yeah, it was, it was definitely. We really liked it. My two, the 20 year olds, they enjoyed it, we did a whole half a day, so I think, by the end of the time, the kids were a little bit like, okay, mom, we’re done. My 15 year old was completely done because it was a lot of walking and she doesn’t do a lot of walking and she was jet lagged and new country, grumpy.

[00:09:33] Kelly Young: So I was like, okay. But my husband and I, we loved it. And then like, the beginning, everybody in the beginning was great, but after a while they were like, okay, are we done walking yet?

[00:09:43] Annie Sargent: Yeah, it is a lot of walking when you’re not used to it, you know. In America, you pretty much only walk when you’re in a mall.

[00:09:50] Kelly Young: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, my husband and I we’re, you know, we’re twice their age. And so we’re just like trucking along and, and this was the whole trip. The whole trip we were like kids, come on, kids catch up, we’re the old people. You’re supposed to be running circles around us.

[00:10:03] Oh, that’s funny. They couldn’t keep up, so it was kind of funny. So we did that with Elyse and then after we left her

[00:10:09] Archeological Museum

[00:10:09] we went over to the Archeological Museum over by the Saint-Sernin, I think is where it is.

[00:10:16] Yeah, it’s called Saint Raymond.

[00:10:18] Yeah, and that was great. We all really liked that a lot. It was neat to like, see all the different, I guess they have like reliefs and sculptures and the head busts, and so that was pretty cool.

[00:10:28] Annie Sargent: And then go down kind of like in the basement, see everything down there. Been going to that museum since I was a kid, they took us there on school trips and stuff. I was going to say, we actually ran into a kids program while we were there. And it was not school-age kids, but they were probably like anywhere from like three to six. And, you know, it’s all in French but they were talking, the person leading the program was talking slow enough, because they were little kids and it was simple words that it was kind of cool because we understood a little.

[00:10:57] Annie Sargent: Ah, that’s great.

[00:10:58] Annie Sargent: Like, oh

[00:10:58] Kelly Young: I know that word.

[00:11:00] Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah, so school kids go there all the time but I haven’t been inside in years. I really need to go back, because I think I remember a little bit about it, but not enough, you know, so, and I do enjoy museums.

[00:11:11] Kelly Young: Yeah, it was nice. it’s not too big, it’s a nice size, it’s like a couple floors, like three or four floors and you get through it in like an hour, an hour and a half. And it was great.

[00:11:22] L’Entrecote

[00:11:22] Annie Sargent: So did you try some of the local food while in Toulouse?

[00:11:25] Oh, we went to, I have two very picky youngins, one pickier then the other. So we weren’t very adventurous with food because we had to find something that everybody would like something, but we did go to l’Entrecote.

[00:11:39] That was one of your recommendations and oh yes, we all fell in love.

[00:11:43] We didn’t realize it was a, you just, you order one thing and you can eat all that you want. So when we got there and we realized that we were like, oh…

[00:11:52] Annie Sargent: Yeah, it’s all-you-can-eat fries.

[00:11:54] Kelly Young: Yeah, fries.

[00:11:55] Kelly Young: Yes, sorry. But they gave us like a huge, we would’ve never been able to eat all of the steak that they put in front of us to begin with. It was so much steak for five people. And we didn’t have to wait in line because you, you were like, well it might not be busy because we were, I think it was a Monday night we were there, maybe a Tuesday night, I can’t quite remember. So we were waiting, you know, to wait in line and we didn’t have to wait in line, which was great.

[00:12:19] Apple Maps vs Google Maps

[00:12:19] Kelly Young: But we did get lost on the way there because we were like, I’ve discovered that, do not use Google Maps when walking in Toulouse, Apple Maps works way better.

[00:12:29] Well, see, that’s something I have not tested because I kind of know my way around Toulouse, so I haven’t had to use either one. But you can also do City Mapper in Toulouse. And I do love City Mapper in Paris. I like the walking, it makes sense to me the way they laid out, but that’s a really personal thing.

[00:12:46] Annie Sargent: Whatever you’re used to probably is what you will enjoy. So you use Google Maps when you walk in the US, but here it didn’t work?

[00:12:57] Kelly Young: Yes. It doesn’t always work great in the US either. There’s some places it works great, and some places it doesn’t, I’ve just discovered. We did a small little, like 20 minute tour all around that general area of Toulouse, cause we were at the hotel and I was like, oh, it’s just over there. We can walk there in like 15, 20 minutes.

[00:13:17] We went all out of the way. It was kind of comical. And then once we found it, we were like, oh yeah, we were way out of the way.

[00:13:23] Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:25] Kelly Young: You know, and being from the States, you know, you don’t walk places at night in the US. And especially, places like some of those old streets, they look like dark alleys, but they’re not dark alleys, it’s just an old city and that’s how it’s built. But it had that feeling to us, you know? And I’m like, we’re in France, we’re fine. I had to like shake that, you know, this isn’t the US, there’s nobody waiting to mug you around the corner.

[00:13:45] Annie Sargent: Not really, no. I mean, I’m not saying it never happens, but it’s really unusual. You might get robbed. Somebody might try and lift your phone or something, but that’s about the worst that can happen, yeah.

[00:13:56] Kelly Young: Yeah. So I was like I don’t get that anywhere, I was like, we’re we’re we’re cool, we’re fine. So we ate there.

[00:14:01] Kelly Young: Where else did we go in Toulouse? I don’t think there was,we were only there pretty much that long. We had two dinners.

[00:14:10] Kelly Young: We really didn’t eat lunch because we were out on the go, we just grabbed snacks.

[00:14:13] Breakfast near the hotel

[00:14:13] Kelly Young: And then we did our breakfast down at, there’s a little cafe outside the Le Grand Balcon, next to the gelato shop. And we would do our breakfast there and was just delicious. It was just croissants and you know, the tartine and the everything, but it was, you know, it was our first taste of having bread and stuff in France. And we were just like, oh my gosh, we’re little piggies.

[00:14:38]

[00:14:38] Annie Sargent: That’s really exciting to talk to somebody who hadn’t, you know, your first experience of France was Toulouse, because usually people go to Paris a few times before they venture South, you know. You really did itcompletely different from other people, so that’s great.

[00:14:54] And it’s funny, because everywhere we went in the South of France, they all asked us, where we were traveling from, where we were going and when they found out we hadn’t been to Paris yet, like the look of surprise on everybody’s faces, you’ve not been to Paris? You came here first?

[00:15:06] Annie Sargent: I know, I know, that never happens.

[00:15:09] Paris is a big city, I’m sure it’s beautiful, but it was just like, you know we’re moving to France so we can go see Paris anytime after that, you know, we’re in no hurry.

[00:15:19] So Toulouse is on the list of places that you’re considering for a possible move.

[00:15:23] Kelly Young: Yes. Yes. We will be back at the end of July and we rented a place right around Saint-Sernin.

[00:15:31] Tolouse is quite empty in the summer

[00:15:31] Nice. So end of July is going to be very quiet, I have to warn you. Toulouse empties a lot in the summer. And since it’s not a super-touristy town, it feels very quiet. It feels much quieter,because you were here the second half of February, when it’s like full life, everybody’s going to work and school and whatever. It’s going to feel quieter in July because people are on vacation.

[00:15:59] Annie Sargent: Including me, I’ll be away.

[00:16:00] Montpellier

[00:16:00] Kelly Young: The other city we chose wasMontpellier. We are going to go back there and we’re doing that the first two weeks. And I did it that way because I knew that July was, everybody went on vacation and I wasn’t sure, you know, I want to spend time on the beach in Montpellier which is one of the reasons that we chose that, because we didn’t get to do any of the beaches

[00:16:19] Kelly Young: the last trip. And I was like, well, everybody comes South to the beach, so I’m sure Montpellier probably gets very crowded, or at least in that area, so we chose that the first two weeks.

[00:16:30]

[00:16:30] Annie Sargent: Yes, Montpellier is not going to be dead in the summer, the same way that Toulouse is. And I’m not that Toulouse is dead, I’m just saying that it’s not as busy as when you, you have seen it with lots of people in the streets. In July, it’s going to be fewer people in the streets.

[00:16:46] Annie Sargent: Montpellier should be, like year round, there’s people year round, because it is a town not far from the Mediterranean, and so people go to go enjoy the sea and cultural visits and that sort of thing. So it’s going to be livelier, I think.

[00:17:02] Kelly Young: Oh, good. Yeah, so I did great.

[00:17:04]

[00:17:04] Adventures in the train

[00:17:04] Kelly Young: So

[00:17:04] Annie Sargent: in the notes that you sent me, you told me that you had some adventures in the train, and I want to hear all about that.

[00:17:14] Kelly Young: Yeah, so trains in Europe, and you know, we had a little warning, but you just, you don’t know until you get there and you experience. Trains like the subway here, you have a good few minutes to get on and off the train. They just don’t take off, they wait for everybody to get on and then they take off. I don’t know how they do it here, but I’ve never in my whole life, had a train door close on me.

[00:17:36] We get to the train station there in Toulouse and it’s packed. Like, I didn’t expect it to be like, there was no, it was hard to even walk around.

[00:17:47] Annie Sargent: Well, and they’re also renovating it, so they’ve closed off a lot of areas.

[00:17:51] Kelly Young: Ah, that makes sense. And then we couldn’t find anybody that spoke English to kind of help. You know, we had your trip guide, so I knew kind of what I was looking for, but somewhere it got lost in my brain that they’re not going to post what platform you need to go to till like 15 minutes, 20 minutes before it shows up.

[00:18:12] Kelly Young: And so I’m like, we’re trying to figure out like where to go, we don’t know where to go. And then our train gets canceled. And we’re like, oh, what do we do now?

[00:18:20] Kelly Young: And so we had to figure out like, oh, okay. Yeah, I have the app I can go in, I can reschedule. So we waited at the train station for a good two hours for our next train, with all our luggage.And then we’re still like trying, like, where’s our train? We couldn’t figure, so finally, my youngest who happened to have just been paying attention was like, oh, there it is. It just popped up, we need to go here. So then it’s a mad dash down the escalator to figure out where we’re going, and we got to the train, literally seconds. In fact, one of the party had to like hop on the train in a different car and then get to the correct car by being inside the train, because it was like the train conductor was like, you need to get on, you need to get on, you know, we’re like running with our luggage.

[00:19:01] Kelly Young: And so we’re already frazzled, we get on the train, we find our seats and I tell my kids and my husband, I say, we’re heading to Carcassonne, it’s one stop. So the next stop, when the train starts to slow down, let’s grab our stuff and get off.

[00:19:15] Annie Sargent: Okay.

[00:19:15] We’re going, the train starts to slow down. I get up. I’m like, come on guys let’s go. My family, just all stares at me. And I’m like, come on, let’s go. They’re like, nobody else is getting off the train. And I’m like, because nobody else is getting off at this stop, we’re the only ones in our car getting off at this stop. Come on, let’s go. They’re just staring at me. And it took a lady in her broken English to be like, y’all need to go.

[00:19:37] Kelly Young: You know, so finally they all start to follow me. And my daughter’s boyfriend somehow got in front of me, I’m not quite sure how. And he can’t figure out how to open the train door. And I’m like, oh gosh, move him out of the way. And I’m like, okay, it’s really not that hard.

[00:19:51] Kelly Young: Okay, be patient. We’re all jet-lagged. So I open the door, we hop off the train, I get off, jessie gets off, I think my youngest got off and then the train started moving. And so my husband’s like, oh gosh, my husband jumps off.

[00:20:05] Kelly Young: And then the last one on is my 23 year old daughter who has on a 50 pound backpack and has a suitcase. She tosses her suitcase out the front and she stands there for a minute and the train’s starting to gain speed and we’re like Chloe, jump, Chloe, jump. So she jumps off.

[00:20:19] Annie Sargent: Okay, this is really dangerous.

[00:20:21] Kelly Young: Yes, it’s very, we just didn’t know what to do, because she was like, she’s the one out of everybody that like, not a lick of French.

[00:20:28] Kelly Young: If her phone went down, and she’s like, she wouldn’t ask, it would’ve been, it was better for her to jump off the train than to take the train onto Narbonne by herself. You know? So I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody else.

[00:20:41] Kelly Young: So she has the backpack on and loses her balance because it weighs half of what she weighs and thank God she rolled away from the train and not into the train.

[00:20:51] Kelly Young: Meanwhile, there is a train attendant way down the platform who is like running towards us screaming, I’m sure cursing us out in French. She gets up to us and I’m like Parlez vous englais she’s like, No, No. It just starts still laying into me. And I’m like, Je ne comprends pas.

[00:21:13] Kelly Young: Just walk away while she’s still yelling at us. And I was like, yes, we’re those stupid Americans, I’m sorry, this will not happen again.

[00:21:20] Trains get cancelled a lot

[00:21:20] Annie Sargent: Okay. So, so just, just to clarify. Okay, so Toulouse is well known as a place where they cancel trains. It happens, it can happen in lots of places, but Toulouse is worse than many. Whenever there’s like a national strike or whatever, Toulouse always joining the strike, you know, so it can be a problem.

[00:21:40] Annie Sargent: So if your train is canceled for any reason, just look at the app. That’s why I recommend people install the app, and buy directly from SNCF, if they can. Because then they get updates and you can see what the next train is. Because some of these train stations, and I didn’t realize Toulouse was this bad, I mean, last time I had to go talk to an attendant at the train station in Toulouse, somebody next to me was speaking English with a person, a customer. So I know there are some, but of course you never know if you’re going to find the one who’s comfortable speaking English or not. So that’s the first thing is, book your train with the app.

[00:22:24] Annie Sargent: And even if you didn’t book it from the French app, from the SNCF Connect app, try to import your trip into that app. So that way you have updates, okay? That’s the fastest, best way to know what’s happening with your train.

[00:22:41] Annie Sargent: And then obviously, people don’t all get off at the same stop. So you might be the only person getting off. You have to keep track of where the train is.

[00:22:51] Annie Sargent: Did that train have any kind ofTV monitors inside of the wagon? Or was it like a simpler?

[00:22:57] Kelly Young: It was a simpler train. There wasn’t anything inside that kind of told you. If I hadn’t have known like, like the first stop, because they come on and you can barely hear and it’s all in French and you know, I’m the one that knows the most French and that’s not that much.

[00:23:11] So I’m like listening out for Carcassonne and you know, they go so fast and your ears just not, you know, your second day there, your ear’s not trained to how it’s spoken with a French accent. All my French knowledge is from people who you know, speak English as their native language and they know French.

[00:23:28] Annie Sargent: Right. Right, right. So yes, trains don’t take very long stops. So typically what I tell people, is that they should be ready to exit. I mean, the train slows down as it’s pulling up, and if you have the app again, on the app, it will show you where you are.

[00:23:46]

[00:23:46] Kelly Young: Oh, that I didn’t know.

[00:23:47] Annie Sargent: Yes, and so you can keep track of more or even Google Maps.

[00:23:52] Annie Sargent: If you open Google Maps, it’ll show you dot moving. It’ll show you moving around and so you can see if you’re approaching the place where you’re supposed to get off. When the train starts slowing down, get your stuff ready by the door, because you’ll only have three-four minutes to exit the train, really. It’s pretty quick.

[00:24:12] Annie Sargent: And they have one train person on the dock, making sure that people are not doing what you’re doing. And so if that person’s on the other side, they can’t yell at you to stay on the freaking train. Get off at the next stop, you’re too late. You missed the stop, you just missed your stop.

[00:24:31] Kelly Young: So needless to say, we didn’t miss any other stops.

[00:24:35] Annie Sargent: Oh good. Oh, good. Yes, that’s important.

[00:24:38] Annie Sargent: And same, if you are a little late getting on the train, you don’t have to walk to the right spot to get on the train because you can move within the train. Like you could totally walk up and down the train, inside. If you’re supposed to go to, I don’t know, car number 12, and the first one you get to is car number one, just get on that car number one and make your way inside the train to car number 12. It might take you a while because there’s people and there’s luggage and all that, but you’ll figure it out and get on as early as you can because really, once you understand how these strains work, they line them up, there’s markers on the track, and they tell you. If you find the right display, it’ll tell you that car number 12 again, is going to be by marker Y. And so if you’re there plenty early, but that’s the thing that happens, what you indicated is exactly what happens, people get worried that they can’t find their train on the display.

[00:25:37] Annie Sargent: They’re like, we’re supposed to go in half an hour and it’s not listed. No, it’s not going to be listed just yet, it’s just on time. They want you to be heading towards your train 15 minutes before. And that makes people nervous a lot of the time. But if you know how to read the display well, then you can say, oh, I’m supposed to go to track number four and marker Y, and there you go.

[00:26:01] And when the train pulls up, you’re going to have just a few meters to walk. But it takes some getting used to, and it was your first time, I mean, you’re not supposed to know everything on your first time.

[00:26:11] Kelly Young: Yeah, but by the end we got it. It took us a little bit, but you know. I’m confident this trip in my train travel.

[00:26:17] Annie Sargent: Yes, And this is another thing to consider is that people wonder, you know, is it going to be tricky to drive in France? And it can be, but honestly, it’s not like taking the train, a complicated train system for the first time is super easy either. Like you can be surprised by, in both places, so…

[00:26:37] Annie Sargent: Anyway, so you survived your jump out of the train, your daughter did. And I’m glad, and then you visited Carcassonne.

[00:26:45] Carcassonne

[00:26:45] Annie Sargent: Yes. So we get to Carcassonne, and we originally had planned on taking the bus, but we were all just so frazzled and tired and I was like, okay, we’re going to get a taxi, but it’s, you know, it’s a small little town and we wait and we wait and we wait and no taxi shows up and we’re five people. And if you have more than four people, we discovered anywhere it’s really hard, because France is just not billed for, or at least in our experience because you know how to navigate it, they don’t like, it’s not built for large groups. You got to get two of everything. And you know, we hadn’t planned on that. Yeah, in that case I think Uber Van would’ve been better, but in Carcassonne…

[00:27:26] Kelly Young: We didn’t see one. So we ended up calling a taxi station, and they sent somebody out and we had to all pile in one car with somebody sitting on somebody’s lap, because they were like, sorry, we don’t have anything big enough. So we were like, all our luggage in the back, we’re all in the front, but he was like, it’s not far, which it wasn’t.

[00:27:43] Kelly Young: So, you know, it was fine. We just went through the little city and we stayed at the Best Western there in Carcassonne.

[00:27:49] Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm

[00:27:51] Kelly Young: And just loved Carcassone and like, I believe, I can’t remember, I think it was you said that it wasn’t going to be very busy because it was a Monday and it was off season, but that was absolutely perfect for us.

[00:28:04] I know I’ve heard you say in other podcasts that Carcassone can get just crazy, crazy in the summertime.So it was very, very cold, very, very windy, but we knew that the weather was going to be that way. So, you know, we just bundled up and it’s a lovely little hotel. The staff there was great, very accommodating. We got there kind of late in the afternoon, so we had time to drop off our stuff. We went and had a drink at one of the little places and then went back and just kind of chilled and went back out to dinner at this little place, gosh, I can’t remember the name of it. I had it written down and I lost it.

[00:28:41] But it’s the only, the lady that owns the place said it’s the only restaurant in the old city that has a fireplace still. I guess because somehow they were like grandfathered in, because it’s the fireplace that’s been there since it was built. And it’s just a little traditional, French food restaurant, but they have stuff. I think it’s, you know, touristy obviously, so they have other things. But my husband and I had the Cassoulet and having nothing else to compare to, it was absolutely delicious. It was so good, so good. And it was like a little home atmosphere. It’s like, you know, decorated all quirky and got, you know, it’s like you went to somebody’s house and they turned their living room into a little restaurant.

[00:29:22] Kelly Young: It was great.

[00:29:23] Annie Sargent: Nice.

[00:29:24] Château Comtal de Carcassonne

[00:29:24] So we had dinner there and then the next day we did the tour of the, I guess is it called a Chateau, the castle, the chateau, Comtal is what it’s called.

[00:29:34] Kelly Young: That’s it. Yes, yes. We did a tour of the Chateau and that was great. I just, you know, America’s so new, wrapping my head around how old everything is over there, I just love it. I think in a former life, I was probably an archeologist or maybe I lived all these places in my former life, so I’m reliving them. I just love all things old. And that was a great little tour. I have a two-year old grandson who stayed home with his mom, because he was too young for an 11-hour flight, but when he’s old enough to do that flight and comes out, we definitely will go there again because I just, I loved it. Just walking around the streets and you know, everything old.

[00:30:11] Kelly Young: We went to the torture museum, which was very eye-opening. Again, we did that at the recommendation of at the hotel, the lady, you know, she knew we had younger kids.

[00:30:21] The torture museum

[00:30:21] Kelly Young: She’s like, oh, for you guys, there’s a haunted house and there’s a torture museum. We didn’t do the haunted house, but we did the torture museum.

[00:30:28] Annie Sargent: You know, I must have gone to Carcassonne a thousand times and I’ve never been inside of that museum. So it’s good to hear that it was good.

[00:30:34] Kelly Young: Yeah, it was good. It’s definitely a touristy museum and you know, but it’s, you’re in Carcassonne, you’re staying the night and you have, were we leaving that day? No, I think we stayed one more night and then we left the next day something like that.

[00:30:47] Annie Sargent: So that might have been a little too long, because Carcassonne…

[00:30:50] Kelly Young: I take that back. We did not, we stayed one night. We left that same day. So we got up early and did everything and then caught our train.

[00:30:56] Annie Sargent: Ah. Ah, okay. So how did you get back to the train station?

[00:31:00] Kelly Young: We got another taxi and it must have been a bigger taxi, I think that time, because I don’t recall us having to squeeze in together.

[00:31:09] Annie Sargent: Right, yeah, so it’s a bit luck of the draw there.

[00:31:13] Kelly Young: Yeah, and the train station at Carcassonne is teeny tiny. Soit was a lot, lot easier.

[00:31:18] Kelly Young: And

[00:31:18] Annie Sargent: the airport is teeny tiny as well.

[00:31:21] Oh, and our train and had gotten delayed again, canceled and rescheduled at Carcassonne. So we I think almost every train we took was either delayed or was rescheduled.

[00:31:35] Kelly Young: Yeah, it was, I was like, okay. I just, I had asked the taxi driver at one point, I was like, is this normal?

[00:31:39] Kelly Young: He’s like, yeah.

[00:31:40] Annie Sargent: It happens, yes. It’s true. It happens.

[00:31:43] Annie Sargent: And locals, we just roll with it. We just go, ah, crap. I’m going to have to wait an hour here, you know.

[00:31:50] Narbonne

[00:31:50] We got used to it by the end of the trip. So then we hopped on the train and went down to Narbonne. And we got off the train station and we decided we had rented an apartment on booking that was a converted convent, which was actually really neat. It was a nice apartment.

[00:32:10] We walked from the train station. It wasn’t that far, it was like a 10, 15 minute walk. It was very nice and Narbonne is a charming little town.

[00:32:18] I imagine it probably does get busier maybe in the summertime, but it was just the right amount of people. The place we stayed was great.

[00:32:26] Annie Sargent: Yeah in February it’s going to be very quiet.

[00:32:28] Kelly Young: But there was still a good amount of people, it wasn’t overcrowded, but in the daytime, everybody was out, you know, doing the lunch on the cafes. And we went out to dinner, we just kind of, because you had warned us that the food in Narbonne was not very good. Or not that it was not very good, but nothing to write home about.

[00:32:43] Annie Sargent: Exactly. It’s normal. Stuff.

[00:32:46] Kelly Young: Yes, that was our experience as well. We were going to try to go to the Grand Buffet, but I failed to make reservations, and we weren’t able to go.

[00:32:57] We were kind of like, aw, because we were all really looking forward to that, because we’re all big foodies, at least to some extent. Like I have picky eaters, but what they eat, the food they like, and you can find it.

[00:33:09] Kelly Young: Buffet satisfies everybody.

[00:33:10] Les Grands Buffets in Narbonne

[00:33:10] Annie Sargent: Yes. So Narbonne has this destination, it’s a big buffet, but it’s a big buffet French style. So they serve like, I don’t know how many cheeses, they have hundreds of varieties of cheeses, and they have regional specialties from all over France. And so this is your chance to try different things.

[00:33:29] Annie Sargent: The thing is, you have to book because it’s always full. You have to book in advance.

[00:33:33] Kelly Young: Yeah. In fact, my husband and I, we were like, how far is that from where we’re going this summer? Because we were considering going back and we’re like, oh it’s a two-hour train ride, no matter where we are. So yeah, not worth it to go two hours just to have dinner.

[00:33:45] Annie Sargent: Yeah, but this is the kind of place that French people kind of, you buy gift certificates to your friends and family. It is a destination restaurant, people go there just to go there.

[00:33:57] Kelly Young: Oh, wow, okay. Well maybe, maybe we will end up doing that. We haven’t decided. And then we were going to rent a car the next day and drive to the beach, but I had woken up, I had planned on the night before looking at your videos and you know, about how to drive in France. I think something had happened to your YouTube and it was down.

[00:34:20] Annie Sargent: Yes.

[00:34:21] Kelly Young: Yeah, so I went to go watch it that morning and it wasn’t there. And I couldn’t, and my jet lag had just set in. My husband had gone to the boulangerie around the corner and came back with croissants for everybody. And he got this one thing that had hazelnut in it and he was like, oh, this looked good, I got that for whoever. Well, I came out and was the last one to get, you know, a pastry and he had just gotten enough for everybody. And all that was left was the hazelnut one. And I don’t like hazelnut so I almost started crying, I was just like, and it’s not me, I was just like, okay, jet lag is setting in. I was like, I can’t put the thing to refresh my memory on how to drive and I’m crying over hazelnut pastry.

[00:35:05] Annie Sargent: You were stressed.

[00:35:06] Kelly Young: Yeah, so I was just like, okay, we’re not renting the car today because I’m not driving. I had already prepaid and everything, but I was like, you know what, we’re just going to stroll around Narbonne today. And that’s what we did, and it was absolutely lovely. We just walked around the city and did some shopping and had some lunch. We went to, I think, is there one or two churches there? We went to one of the churches there. There’s the one that everybody goes to, I’m sure there’s many more, but there’s one that everybody goes to. I can’t remember what it’s called.

[00:35:36] Kelly Young: Yeah, I can’t either. It’s a big one. Our place that we stayed had a rooftop tower that we could go up to and look over all of Narbonne, which is really pretty. And it’s like, it’s right there, you can’t miss it. It was gorgeous. Oh, and we had gone to the church in Carcassonne too.

[00:35:50] Churches were just never on my radar, we’re not super-religious people, but now I want to go to every church in France just to see. Because they’re so pretty.

[00:35:59] Annie Sargent: And they’re interesting. Yeah, they are interesting most of the time. Yeah.

[00:36:02] Montpellier

[00:36:02] Then you hopped back on the train to get to Montpellier.

[00:36:06] Kelly Young: Yes. So then we get to Montpellier. On and off the train was great, we had done kind of our research before we left and we’re like, okay, our place is walking distance, which it was, but it was all uphill.

[00:36:20] Kelly Young: We went to the St. Rose Station, but Montpellier was just popping, it had so many people. I think we got there around three in the afternoon and it was everywhere. People everywhere, has the trams that go around, and so it was, it was a very, you know, kind of the same thing as in Toulouse, it was very busy, but we got there by train versus plane, so it was kind of a different feel.

[00:36:45] We rented a cute little apartment off of the Place du Marche aux Fleurs? Something like that, but it was, yeah, tons of little restaurant cafes with their seats out everywhere.

[00:37:00] Kelly Young: And we were there two nights, maybe two and a half. And we got in on a Thursday night. And I guess Thursday is the very busy night, we discovered around where we were. Because we went out Thursday night for dinner and it just everywhere, waits everywhere, people walking all over the city and then ironically, friday night, it wasn’t as busy. It was really weird because you know, in the States it’s Friday and Saturday night, that’s, you know, busy everywhere. And they were still busy, but compared to what Thursday was, I was like, oh, wow.

[00:37:29] Kelly Young: And then it was like happy hour, all day. In the restaurants, in the Plaza where we were, so it was like, oh, okay, hey, we like Montpellier.

[00:37:37] Musée Fabre

[00:37:37] And we just walked around the city, we did a dinner, walked around the city. my younger two left out of Montpellier the next day. My husband and I, and my 15 year old stayed for the rest of the trip. So the next day we went to the Musée Fabre which was fabulous, absolutely fabulous. We probably did two and a half hours in there.

[00:38:02] Kelly Young: And the last half hour was like a rushed. Okay, we want to see everything because we just liked it so much, because they were like, okay guys, time to go, time to go. And I was like, no, there’s more. So we could have easily done more. Great museum, I highly recommend that to anybody that goes there. We went over to, oh, gosh, I should have done my homework and written everything down where we went.

[00:38:22] Kelly Young: There’s a, like a promenade, where they have their own little Arc de Triomphe. We went and saw that. Behind that is like the little park with the statues of one of the King Louis and the aquaducts. And that was gorgeous. We really enjoyed strolling along there. It’s a really, Montpellier is a lovely town, really, because it’s a good size, you know, and another thing you mentioned in your notes before we talked was that French cities, like in America, you wouldn’t think that you would want to live downtown in a city,

[00:38:56] Annie Sargent: but in France, there’s very different feel, isn’t it?

[00:39:00] Kelly Young: It’s totally different. We hadn’t even considered living in the city. And now we’re both like, let’s ditch the cars and live in the city, because it’s totally doable. Because in both places, well not in Toulouse, but even in Toulouse, being in the hotel and on the square, we thought it would be noisy because it wasn’t, it was not noise at all.

[00:39:18] Annie Sargent: Well, some days it is. But cities are really nice. If you can afford city centers. And usually, it’s a lot more expensive too, but if you can afford to live in a city center, it’s a very nice lifestyle. Because you don’t need a car really, or you only need it occasionally. And it’s a really good, you know, it’s very good. In America, you want to be in the suburbs, you know.

[00:39:40] Not necessarily, I mean it’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with French suburbs. We don’t have that many of them because France is a lot more, I guess dense, you know.

[00:39:50] Around cities, we have densely populated areas and then empty for quite a while, you know, or with just little villages sprinkled here and there.

[00:39:59] We totally were like, yeah, we could do this. So in fact, that’s what we’re planning on doing. And I think probably by French standards, the cities, at least Montpellier and Toulouse. If you’re coming from America, if you live in California, you’re going to think anything that you could get there is a steal, because we actually looked into some properties and we could get twice the size for half of what we pay for here.

[00:40:26] Kelly Young: That’s half the size.

[00:40:28] That was another kind of eye opener.

[00:40:29] Kelly Young: We’re like, oh, wow.

[00:40:30] Annie Sargent: That depends a lot on where you’re from, you know?

[00:40:34] Kelly Young: Yes, absolutely.

[00:40:35] But that’s why people who live in London, you know, they have a tiny flat in London and they can buy a pretty nice house somewhere in the South of France because of the prices in London. It’s a big difference. And there are places, you know, like Montpellier would get fairly expensive, so would Toulouse, but you have little smaller towns that are not quite as much. There’s plenty of opportunities, let’s put it that way.

[00:41:00] Kelly Young: Yes, absolutely. We love Montpellier.

[00:41:02] Kelly Young: You know, there was funny and I don’t know if you know anything about this. There was, everywhere we go, Montpellier had the most wonderful street art, like graffiti, but not like graffiti that you’d see here in the US. It was actually like, you know, little things of art.

[00:41:17] Kelly Young: And then every once in a while, you’d see half of a bicycle sticking out of a building. I don’t know what that was, but everyone was like, okay, what is this?

[00:41:27] Annie Sargent: Decorative!

[00:41:29] Kelly Young: Yeah, it was just so weird. I was like, why a bicycle? It was everywhere we went. I was like, okay, it was fun, I appreciated it.

[00:41:37] Annie Sargent: Yeah. And it’s a fun town. You can do a lot in Montpellier around the bike, because it’s fairly flat. There’s small little hills, but it’s easy hills, and a lot of it is pedestrian or bikes, you know? There’s a fair bit in the city center where they don’t let most cars come through.

[00:41:55] Annie Sargent: And a lot of French cities are doing that. They limit the number of cars that can come through the city center to only the people who live there.

[00:42:03] Kelly Young: Yeah, they have those little, it took us a while to figure out what that was, the little things that come up out of the ground.

[00:42:08] Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm mm-hmm

[00:42:10] Kelly Young: We were like, oh, it’s keeping people out.

[00:42:12] Annie Sargent: Exactly. Keeping cars out, unless they live there or they’re a taxi.

[00:42:18] If they’re a taxi they have the stuff to make them, because they have to take people to their hotel. And that’s one of the problems with Uber, is that Uber drivers do not have what it takes to lower those pegs. And so they can’t take you to the very city center, most places.

[00:42:34] Marseille

[00:42:34] Kelly Young: Yeah, we found that out when we were in Toulouse, the hotel called the taxi, he punched in the code and went right in. When we went to Marseille, which was our next stop, we got on the train, we went over to Marseille and the train station at Marseille was huge. It’s the biggest train station we went to.

[00:42:49] And we just found the taxi area or, well, it was probably an Uber now that you tell me this. They drove us over to, or maybe they weren’t an official taxi, I don’t know. But he couldn’t get into the city center, he was like, I can just can drop you here, and you know, and he didn’t speak very good, he spoke some English, but not a lot. And, you know, I was trying to be like, can’t you just punch the code? He didn’t, I guess didn’t have it.

[00:43:11] Some issues in Marseille

[00:43:11] Annie Sargent: So you had some issues in Marseille, let’s talk about that as we finish up.

[00:43:15] Kelly Young: Yes. Marseille, lovely city but it’s a different feel. Got off the train, hopped a taxi and it’s got, it feels like a European New York. It’s the only way I know how to describe it. The buildings are taller, there’s a lot more people, it’s much more dense. We got to our hotel, we stayed at the Old Port, a nice little hotel and you know, we dropped off our stuff, we come back down.

[00:43:39] Kelly Young: And first, we noticed the ambulances like crazy, like you just hear them everywhere and we’re like, okay, it’s a bigger city, whatever.

[00:43:48] We walk to go find dinner and there’s an ambulance right outside the hotel. My 15 year old swears that she saw somebody with the sheet all the way over them getting into the ambulance.

[00:44:00] Kelly Young: She’s like, that was a dead person, mom. I was like, no, it wasn’t. And she’s like, no, no, mom, I swear to you. I was like, yeah, it wasn’t a dead person. She’s like they had the sheet, I swear.

[00:44:10] Kelly Young: I didn’t see it, so I don’t know. So she immediately, the whole time is like, okay, I saw a dead person in Marseille.

[00:44:17] Annie Sargent: Well,

[00:44:18] Kelly Young: I

[00:44:18] Annie Sargent: don’t know, maybe. It’s possible.

[00:44:20] You know, you hear about Marseille being dangerous, this, that, and the other. And we had heard also from a lot of people, you know, it’s like any other big city, you have your bad parts of town, you stay away from this area and you’re fine. But you know, not knowing the area, not having anyone with us, we were like, okay, well, north of town I think is what we were told.

[00:44:38] Kelly Young: And we’re like, but how far north? Where exactly, you know, because we just have this little view of like wherever we walk. We always had that in the back of our mind the whole time we were in Marseille, so we’re a little bit hyper cautious. Hindsight 20/20, I don’t think we really need to be, but you said, it was a whirlwind trip. By the time we got to Marseille we were exhausted.

[00:44:57] Annie Sargent: And Marseille is a big city and with a lot of people and it probably has a little more crime than Toulouse, for example, yes, I’m sure it does.But you are in a nice part of it, like, right around the port is as nice as it gets, but all the ambulances and all that, yeah, that would be unsettling.

[00:45:14] Kelly Young: It was, you know, it was like, oh, it’s a big city, but I’m like, you know, I’ve been to New York and stayed in New York and I don’t hear this many ambulances.

[00:45:22] Aix-en-Provence by bus

[00:45:22] Annie Sargent: So one other thing I want you to talk about, you took the bus between Marseille and Aix.

[00:45:28] Kelly Young: Yes. Yeah.

[00:45:29] Annie Sargent: How was that?

[00:45:30] Kelly Young: It was super easy. We later found out, we’d asked the hotel, how do we get to Aix? And she was like, oh, you hop the train to here to the train station. Well, we found out we didn’t need to take a taxi from the train station, we could have just taken the train all the way to our hotel.

[00:45:43] Kelly Young: Our hotel was like literally at the train stop. But yeah, she says, take this bus, I think it was like bus 50 or something like that. And it was super easy. Got to the train station, took us a minute to figure out where the buses were. But once we did that, went to the bus, paid for round trip ticket right there at the bus.

[00:45:59] They took credit cards, so that was easy. We didn’t have to have, you know, exact cash or anything. And it was about a 20, 30 minute ride. And, you know, these buses aren’t like buses in the States, these are like the coach buses that you would hire to drive across country. So that was nice. I wasn’t expecting that, you know, the buses that take you from city to city here in the States often, aren’t very nice, they have plastic seats. These were actually very comfortable, air conditioned.

[00:46:25] Annie Sargent: Yeah, it’s normal to take the bus. I have to congratulate you because for your first time in France, you did a lot of stuff that’s unusual. And also you were quite daring, I mean, you took a lot of public transportation. And there you are, you want to come again and check it out some more so you can still continue to find a place to live.

[00:46:42] Annie Sargent: So that’s as amazing. That’s really amazing, because most Americans, they just want to stay within their comfort zone, which is the car, because that’s what they’re used to, you know?

[00:46:52] You really went out of your way to, to try things. And so, coming back, you’ll look around again at Toulouse, Montpellier, did you say Aix as well?

[00:47:02] We were considering Aix, it’s a little bit smaller, I’m kind of leaning towards the other two. My husband was like, oh, well, you know, let’s check Aix out more. But I feel that it might be a little bit on the small side for us coming from Los Angeles.

[00:47:16] Kelly Young: Yes,

[00:47:16] Annie Sargent: and I’m sure I’ve said that before on the podcast, but Aix is a lot of older people and older money. It’s harder to kind of make your place in Aix, because they are not looking to expand. These are somewhat people with their lives are made and they’re not looking to make any friends.

[00:47:36] Annie Sargent: Montpellier is a lot more open and a lot more, you know, I think it would be easier to fit in, or Toulouse as a matter of fact.

[00:47:45] Kelly Young: Yeah, that’s kind of the idea we had. And Marseille, the people in Marseille actually, granted it’s just on a tourist, you know, not knowing the actual people that like live there, but the people at the shops and the servers and stuff, they were so friendly and wanted to know more about us than I think anywhere else we were in France, it was kind of really, you know, surprising.

[00:48:05] Kelly Young: It was nice, they were really nice. And it was more diverse than everywhere else in France. I live outside of LA in Orange county, in a very not diverse part, so I’m you know, we’re used to that. I like diversity, but you know, I’m going to live where I’m going to live.

[00:48:20] Annie Sargent: Yeah.

[00:48:21] Kelly Young: But, you know, for people who are looking for their point of travel or moving or whatever, and want more diversity, Marseille is definitely the place to go.

[00:48:30] Annie Sargent: Yep.

[00:48:31] Kelly Young: It was nice. We really enjoyed.

[00:48:32] Annie Sargent: Wonderful. Well, Kelly, we’ve been talking a long time, I’m afraid we need to bring it to an end. It’s been lovely to have you. Do you have any kind of, anything you wanted to add that I didn’t ask you about?

[00:48:41] I don’t think so, I would just tell anybody who’s interested in kind of doing the same thing, we did it that quick and that fast, because we were on a mission. It wasn’t really vacation, it was, let’s see where we want to come back and spend more time. If you want to just do it for vacation, spend more time in each city, because they’re all lovely.

[00:49:02] Kelly Young: And we indeed left each city not wanting to leave to go to the next city, we really wanted more of the city we were in, until we got to the next city, we’re like oh this is nice too.

[00:49:11] Kelly Young: So definitely wouldn’t recommend hitting that many cities in five days, unless you’re on a mission, which we were.

[00:49:17] Annie Sargent: Yeah, take your time.

[00:49:19] Kelly Young: But go to the South of France, go there before you go to Paris. It’s absolutely lovely. We’re actually hitting Paris when we go back this summer.

[00:49:26] Annie Sargent: Oh, good. It’s nice too. Yeah, it’s very nice too.

[00:49:30] Kelly Young: We’re doing the whole museum thing, that’s our whole focus of Paris.

[00:49:34] Annie Sargent: Museums, you will enjoy Paris. Paris has amazing museums. Yep, they’re excellent for that.

[00:49:40] Annie Sargent: Kelly, thank you so much.

[00:49:42] Kelly Young: You’re welcome, thank you.

[00:49:43] Annie Sargent: Au revoir.

[00:49:44] Kelly Young: Au revoir.

[00:49:45] Legal notice

[00:49:45] Annie Sargent: The Join Us in France Travel Podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and copyright 2022, by Addicted to France. It is released under a Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-commercial, No derivatives license.

Transcript for Episode 401: Toulouse to Marseille by Train