Visitors from the States

Saturday April 2, 2011 Day 276

The internet indicated that the weather today would be sunny, with a high of 20° and a zero percent chance of precipitation. Of course they lied. As I hung the clothes out to dry, I realized that it was quite cool around 9:00, and almost damp. It was rather cool when we went to the market, and hadn’t warmed up much by the time Roger left for chess. On his way to chess, he called me to tell me that it was misting lightly and suggested that I might want to bring the clothes in from the line. I don’t think it got above 16° today - HOW CAN THE FORECAST BE SO WRONG???

Market day - and as usual, the Saturday market was large and crowded. We bought strawberries, asparagus, two rotisserie chickens, pecans, walnuts, olives stuffed with almonds, tomatoes, cucumber and one our way out, some sunflowers. We bought more than we usually do, but we are buying for five.

We made the beds upstairs, and Roger vacuumed the kitchen before he left for chess. I painted for a bit, then mopped the floor and did the dishes. The house didn’t look too bad for our company.

Just before 5:00, I went down to the train station to see if Mary Ellen, Jane and Aaron were on the 5:07 train from Perpignan and points west. When I arrived right at 5:00, the platform number was not up on the board yet. Several other trains were marked as “delayed.” There was an announcement of demonstrations in Nimes which may be impeding access to and from the train station there, but that was of little interest to me except that I had not seen such an announcement before. Finally, when the train was due, a notice popped up on the board that the arrival would be 15 minutes late. Interestingly enough, the departure was marked as being only 10 minutes late, so they planned to make up some of the time by reducing the station delay from 15 minutes to 10 minutes. When the train finally pulled in, I positioned myself so that I could see both the escalator from upstairs and the stairs from below. Access in the Montpellier train station to the remote platforms is by escalator which takes passengers to the upper floor, and also downstairs and underneath the tracks, with access by stairs. I was hoping they took the escalator! After most of the passengers seemed to stop coming, I went outside to make sure I had not missed them, then returned to the station and started up the escalator. I was halfway up when I saw them and they saw me. Excellent! I grabbed a piece of luggage and led the way out the door and across the street and we were at the apartment in less than 15 minutes.

We visited for an hour or so, then I started supper when Roger showed up from chess. We ate dinner of rotisserie chicken, fresh asparagus from the market, red rice, salad and fresh strawberries, also from the market, with whipped cream. Afterward wd played games (of course!!) until after midnight.