An Honest Mistake

After coming back from Toulouse, Leslie and I had a few free days in Avignon before my parents arrive and before she leaves for Madrid. We decided to continue to explore the surrounding villages by train and by bus. Yesterday, we met around the round table (our kitchen table) and discussed our options for the day. We settled on taking a 1:40 train to Tarascon with our bikes to visit the castle there. We arrived at the station with plenty of time to buy our tickets and get our bikes on the train. We found it a little odd that the train was completely empty but we assumed it was because it was a Tuesday afternoon. We decided to wait for the train to depart by turning on some music and dancing in the aisles. A few minutes later, a conductor spotted us dancing and got on the train. Completely embarrassed, we raced back to our seats and pretended to be asleep. He asked us where we were going and if we were on the correct train. Once he knew where we were headed, he told us that our train had recently departed and we were on the wrong train. It turns out that the platform that we were suppose to depart from was about 50 meters further down the train track. We very quickly got our bikes off the racks and walked back to the ticket stand without further embarrassing ourselves. Fortunately, we were able to take the next train for free since we had already purchased our tickets. We had a two hour wait so we decided to bike around Avignon before the next train. We successfully made it on the next train and found ourselves in Tarascon. As it turns out, the city wasn't as big as we thought and the castle wasn't as fascinating as it looks from the train, so missing our first train turned out to be an advantage. We toured the castle and walked around the city before leaving 2 hours later.