The weather forecast for today was rain so we planned a relaxing day in. That meant a bit of a sleep in, a leisurely morning with a full pot of coffee to go with a baguette and croissants, and nothing particularly planned for the afternoon. Then the sun came out and Bill said “Let’s go to Italy. There’s a train at 11:32”. Uh oh, the last time he started a sentence with “Let’s…” we ended up moving to France. This turned out to be just an exercise to see if we really could be spontaneous and take advantage of being within a 20-minute walk of the station.

Once we actually live in Carcassonne we’ll be getting our senior travel card that gives us 25 percent off fares during the week and 50 percent off on weekends. This was a Sunday (weekend discount!) at 10:18 so we had an hour and 14 minutes to get cleaned up and get to the station. As you can see from this photo we got there in plenty of time to see the TGV arrive and depart. I read another blogger’s post that she keeps a suitcase packed with a few day’s essentials so that she can literally dash to the train station when the fancy (and a cheap fare) strikes. I just looked at the French rail website to see that they are currently offering 2 for 1 rates to a bunch of destinations. If you’ll excuse me….