French Fried Couchette Potatoes

The plan, as recommended by Rick Steves' "Europe Through the Back Door", was to leave Venice in the evening on the night train to Paris, sleeping all the way in "couchette" cars. That was the plan. Things started to unravel when we got on the train to find our six person compartment a mess, with old pizza and water bottles, no pillow cases or sheets, and one bed locked up. As the odd man out, Tom went to find another compartment with an empty spot, only to discover the reason for the mess: the French conductors were on strike. So he slept (or tried to) in the now-empty conductor's compartment, with a Spanish couple who had somehow lost their first class compartment. Sometime in the middle of the night the French customs guy came around checking passports, which was a bit of a surprise to Patti. When he walked into her compartment, and reached up for the light switch, in her half-awake state she mistook him for a thief reaching for our bags and proceeded to try to punch his lights out. Luckily he was understanding (must be used to dazed and confused Americans), and we didn't end up in a French jail. In any event, we arrived in Paris in the morning, not particularly bushy-tailed, and headed off to our hotel, having left a bag of clothes on the train.