A story about ice cream saving our lives

Kirsten and I have been living by a simple mantra while we are here: "An ice cream a day, keeps the traveling suave!" I know it sounds so silly, but it's actually true! Please allow the following story to convince you of our theory.

Yesterday we arrived at the Barcelona train station before 8am to catch our train by 8:16 to Nice, France. This train was only supposed to take 7.5 hours to reach our final destination - including the two changes we had somewhere in France. When we looked at the Departure board in BCN, our train was not there. Weird. We had to stand in line at the information center to figure out where our train was. Since this train did not require reservations, our Eurail Passes worked as tickets. However, to get to the specific platform we had to have a special pass to open the gate. We had to flag down a security guard to let us through. Of course we knew this was because we hadn't had ice cream yet, but we figured that was the end of our odd train experiences. Wrong.

Our train was late. REALLY late. When we finally got to the correct stop, we bolted from the train to find the platform for our next train to France. We found it, and thank goodness, it was running late as well. When the train pulled into our last station before Nice, we were supposed to reserve our seats because Spain can't reserve seats that are out of their country. They were sold out. Therefore we had to take the later train which included one more changeover. Meanwhile, I also fall down the stairs at the train station while wearing my backpack which only continues to gain weight.
We finally get on our train and make it to the next changeover. Strangely enough, we can't find our train on the departure board - AGAIN. We go to the information center and discover that our train has been canceled. GREAT. They make us stand in line for free tickets to Nice that doesn't allow us to arrive until 10:30. At this point I am ready to stress-eat so Kirst and I both buy some of the largest meals I have ever seen at McDonalds.... and it includes ice cream. Thank goodness!

After we eat the ice cream, the rest of the day changes. We decide to book our train from Nice to Florence since we have so much extra time and the French man who helps us was SO NICE and HELPFUL. He managed to reserve seats for us even though they were almost sold out; he had to pull a few strings and try a few different trains, but in the end we got the train we wanted. The chances of getting a person working in France who speaks ENGLISH and is KIND and so HELPFUL was a miracle in itself and I am certain that it is because we finally ate ice cream.

Tomorrow we are heading to Italy... It is cold in Nice and I hope it's warmer in Florence! We also heard from some people at our hostel that it is snowing in Prague so we allowed ourselves a few purchases at H&M. Warm clothes, of course!

xoxo
Meg