One of the things I love about train travel is what I call "window time" -- those minutes when, instead of reading, talking to your neighbor, or sleeping, you just find yourself staring out the window at the passing scenery. Train travel in my native northern New Jersey has little to recommend it in terms of scenic interest, but my periodic jaunts around France and other parts of Europe are often fascinating. I can sit for hours, simply hypnotized by whatever is flashing past me outside my window.
Where else, on just one five-hour journey across France, could you see all of the following as you move from south to north:
- Palm trees and sunshine in the Var
- Fishing boats bobbing in the Mediterranean Sea
- Terracotta tile roofs on pastel-painted buildings
- A Roman arène
- Views of distant southern mountains on the Cote d'Azur... with snowy tops!
- Church towers and spires with open ironwork bell towers on top (built that way to ensure they won't topple over when the mistral blows)
- A view of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde (the Sacre Coeur of Marseilles), the old fort at the harbor and the notorious Chateau d'If
- Crumbling monastery ruins hanging on precarious cliffs
- Perched villages in the hills of the Luberon
- A real Roman aquaduct (they sure knew how to build things to last, didn't they?)
- Vineyards and more vineyards
- Old stone farmhouses that have been in someone's family for generations
- Rows of tall trees planted to protect crops and vines from the blast of the mistral
- Rolling green farm slopes dotted with tiny stone villages
- SNOWY farm slopes, also dotted with tiny stone villages
- Chateaux that are older than my own country
- And finally... back to Paris (with rain and gray skies, of course!)
