two backpacks and a diaper bag

Tuesday, May 15th. Nice-Avignon. We left the apartment at 11am to catch our 11:57 train. The owner of the Airbnb came by to see how we were doing. He was a nice guy but he was defensive when we mentioned a couple of things about the apartment.

First of all, he listed a dryer on the Airbnb listing, but there was no dryer in the apartment. When we looked for apartments for our travels, we would filter out the places without washer and dryer because we knew we would have to do laundry quite often. So when we get to an apartment that claimed to have a dryer and we find that it doesn’t have a dryer, it frustrates us. This happened to us a couple of times already: Warsaw, Krakow, Vienna, and a couple of other places. At least when we wrote to the owners in a private message about the inaccuracy in the listing, they came back with an apology. They also ended up taking down the dryer listing from Airbnb. This owner, however, wrote back to us in the private message saying that he considered the towel warmer to be a dryer. We explained to him that it wasn’t. He essentially disagreed. And he has yet to take the dryer off the listing.

Second, we informed him that we were not able to properly boil water in the electric kettle because there was some milk remains in the kettle. The previous guests must have boiled some milk in the kettle. When we used the kettle to boil water for Arthur, our boiled water ended up with some white flakes. When we told him this, he came back with some explanation to why he was going to put up this apartment for long-term lease after the summer season. I’m not sure why he had to outline his plans to us. We only wanted to inform him of the kettle situation so that he would be able to clean it properly for the next guests. It was an inconvenience for us, but we had no choice. It wasn’t like we were going to leave the apartment and find another place.

Third, he asked us if we slept all right because he recognized that the traffic outside could be loud. We told him that we managed to sleep all right, even with the baby, because we used white noise. It was definitely loud, though. He just replied to us that it was like that everywhere in the city. We disagreed. The bedroom was basically in the basement. We never opened the bedroom window because if we did, we would see people’s feet as they walk by. Also, whenever the bus would drive by, we would feel the vibration.

The apartment was not perfect and we wouldn’t stay here again, but I wouldn’t necessary write all these things in the review. His response to our feedback, though, was not as I expected. It was as if he was not even listening to what we had to say. I was glad to be out of there, to be honest.

Anyway, it took us about 20 minutes to walk to the train station. Arthur was cooperative. He sat in the car seat as I pushed the stroller all the way to the station.

When we got to the station, we noticed that our train platform had not yet been posted. The departure screen showed that our train was on time, but it had no platform yet. Since we had to pick up our Avignon-Barcelona tickets for May 18, we decided to stand in line to get the tickets. We had time anyhow.

At about 11:40, we got the tickets. The screen still showed no platform posting. But then, by luck, I saw the screen on the train on Platform A. It was Train 6080 to Paris Gare Lyon. It was our train.

I pointed it out to Sean and he said we should just head to the train.

It was weird that the departure screen still showed no platform post for our train and yet it seemed like the train had been waiting there for quite a while. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t seen the train label.

We went through the gates and confirmed with the train label that it was our train.

We had to walk to the end of the platform to get to our carriage.

This train was a two-level train. Our seats were on the bottom level. We only had two seats, not the three that we usually get.

When we bought the tickets three months ago, we didn’t realize how important it was for Arthur to have his own seat. The Warsaw-Krakow train automatically assigned Arthur a seat even though his ticket was free. Budapest-Zagreb ticket did the same thing. However, Italian, French, and Spanish trains don’t. They considered Arthur to be a lap-child. If we wanted a seat for him, we would have to buy a ticket for “child age 4-11” and pay the child ticket price. I was able to purchase the tickets for the Italian trains with seats next to ours, but I was not able to buy them for the French and Spanish trains. I could buy him a ticket, but the seat would not be anywhere near ours.

So for the next three hours, we had only two seats.

For the first half hour, there was an empty seat across the aisle. This meant that Arthur was able to sit next to me in his car seat while Sean sat on the empty seat.

When passengers from Antibes got on the train, though, Sean had to move back to his assigned seat. We took Arthur out of the car seat and placed the car seat in the luggage compartment.

When we had to put Arthur to sleep, Sean used the car seat. When Arthur was finally asleep, Sean placed the car seat on my lap. This worked out well. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.

The three-hour ride went by faster than I thought it would. For the last hour, Sean had to walk around with Arthur because Arthur was getting antsy.

We got off at Avignon TGV and we had to take another train to Avignon Centre. The platform change was easy. There was no need for an elevator or escalators or stairs because you get to the platforms using ramps and slopes. It was very wheelchair friendly.

The train from Avignon TGV to Avignon Centre only took five minutes. Once we arrived at the station, we called an uber.

There was heavy traffic around the train station as the city worked on building tram lines. It should have taken us about 5-10 minutes to get to the Airbnb, but with traffic, it took us twice as long.

It was fine, though, Florian met us outside the apartment, showed us around the apartment, and gave us a couple of tips about the neighborhood.

We then put Arthur to sleep for nap, and when he woke up about half an hour later, we went down to the grocery store, which was only a block away to grab some supplies. We also dropped by the bakery to grab some pastries and desserts.

The location of this apartment is excellent. And the apartment itself is quite stylish.

I’m looking forward to an awesome couple of days here in Avignon!