Another snafu...

At the train station we had another snafu. I booked most of our trains during the summer online to take advantage of good rates and paid online with plans to get the tickets at the station from a self-service kiosk. I had a pretty good suspicion that the kiosk would not work with US credit cards (European cards have a chip instead or in addition to the magnetic stripe. Our cards didn't work so we had to wait in line to talk to someone at the ticket counter. They also quite specifically state that you must use the card that you used to purchase the tickets. After swiping both of our credit cards and having the agent tell us that neither card was right, I remembered that while in California in August, Ryan lost our credit card and they issued us a new one. Apparently this is a big problem and she had to reticket us to Bayeux with only 4 minutes until the train left (our original train had been rescheduled). We were charged 70e for the new tickets instead of 30e that I originally paid. This agent knew English well but we were in too big a hurry to deal with the reserved tickets problem and ran to catch the train (Ryan actually ran a little on his knee). At the station in Bayeux there was a very helpful girl who understood some English (but didn't speak much). She re-ticketed us for Nimes (at a cost of 200e instead of 79!) but helped us fill out a form that should reimburse us for the extra cost. I only have one more train ticket that will be a problem but I will sort that out later.

Beautiful scenery on the way to Bayeux...