Saved By The Bla Bla Car

What was supposed to be a 9:52 train departure from Pau became a 1:40 p.m. bus departure. That meant I had to kill 4 hours in Pau with a suitcase. Then it turned out the bus wasn't going to Toulouse, it was going to Muret, with stops in Lourdes and Tarbes. From Muret, I had to take a train to Toulouse and then catch another bus.

I gave the plan a 20% chance of landing me in Albi by the end of the day.

I was happy to be wrong. Even though SNCF was on strike, it was organized chaos. The buses ran on time. The connections worked. The staff knew the bus schedules by heart. That said, I could have crossed France for free, because they didn't check tickets.

By 8 p.m. I was in Albi. I walked through 20 minutes of Bermuda Triangle-like misguided GPS directions from Apple Maps on my iPhone, but I eventually found Hôtel des Pasteliers on Rue Honoré de Balzac. The owner, Stéphane, had attended Forham University in New York for one year and lived in Cuba for 12 years. His wife was Cuban.

The highlight of the evening was blood pudding salad and duck confit at Le Petit Bouchon, a place recommended by Stéphane.

Stéphane asked how I was returning to Toulouse, and I said the train workers were going to be on strike the following day, Tuesday, so I didn't know. He suggested I register for a service called "Blablacar," which is a ride share app. For 5 euros I could ride with someone back to Toulouse, and it would take an hour.

That's exactly what I did. My driver was named Daniel, and he was a professional photographer of family portraits (no weddings). He spoke fluent English and loved the Icelandic band Sigur Ros. He and his wife considered moving to Iceland (he'd been there seven times), but he decided against it. There were two other paying passengers in the car, both French speaking, and when we arrived in Toulouse Daniel dropped us off at La Vache metro station in Toulouse.