2 Aussie Nomads

It was another driving day today. Sort of a rest day, and hopefully not too stressful.

We checked out of Laurent & Didier’s place at Aix-en-Provence, and checked in to Farzad’s place in Nice.

But a lot happened between those two events.

We let Didier know last night that we would be departing at around 9.00am this morning, and he responded (via the AirBNB app) that he would be there to say goodbye. Personally I like the social interaction with our hosts, although we have had very little of it for this trip so far.

We have interacted with Didier on a couple of occassions now … when we arrived Didier welcomed us holding his 10 month old son (Milo – pronunced “Mee-lo”- I think he said), and we saw Laurent playing on the trampoline with (what I assume was) his son, who must have been about 7 or 8.

From what I can gather, Laurent and Didier are married and there are a couple of kids, but I’m not entirely sure who belongs to who. Experience has taught me not to ask a question if you don’t really need to know the answer.

Other than a couple of sightings, we have not had anything to do with Laurent. Maybe he is shy.

So just before 9.00am, I opened the front door and started taking suitcases out to Claude. Laurent was putting his son into the car, so I gave him a cheery “Bonjour”. I turned away for a moment, and by the time I’d turned back to introduce myself, Laurent was in his car and driving away.

Maybe he is very shy. Or he was late for work.

So I made a few trips in and out to get all of our stuff loaded, and started the engine, but there was no sign of Didier.

We made a show of turning Claude around in the driveway to make it clear that we were leaving, but he was still a no-show. So we dropped the keys into the letterbox, sent him a quick goodbye on the AirBNB app, and took off.

It was a cool start to the day – 7 degrees that felt like 5, so we kept our jackets handy in the car.

Aix-en-Provence to Nice is about 2 and a half hours on the toll road, and we had previously told Farzad (tonight’s host) that we wouldn’t be in Nice until about 3.00pm, so the maths didn’t work.

We decided to take the scenic route … the one without tolls. That one is about 4 hours and if we add in a stop for lunch, it might just work out. It might be a long stop for lunch, but it will be a nice, relaxing drive in the country.

Hopefully. What could possibly go wrong?

We gave Joséphine her instructions and headed off. I was particularly anxious to avoid the centre of Aix generally, and the bus lanes specifically, so we made sure that Joséphine understood that expectation.

An expression that springs to my mind when driving in France, is that “He who hesitates is lost”. Or perhaps the more relevant expression is that “he who hesitates, disintegrates”.

I have found that driving in France requires you to behave just like everyone else, which is somewhere between decisive and aggressive .. but it’s a fine line.

If you see a gap in the traffic, you just take it. If you need to change lanes, just do it and someone will get out of the way. They seem to be very efficient at just moving across to another lane if you move into their spot.

In fact I’ll go even further and say that the French not only accept that style of driving … they EXPECT it. They expect you not to hesitate.

The early part of the route took us along some of the same roads that we take when we have been to the park and ride facility, so we recognised some of those streets. But before we had gone 5km, we had already taken our first wrong turn.

Joséphine’s instructions were unclear. She said that we needed to be in the left lane ready to turn left, but I must have misjudged how far it was until the turn, and so I found myself turning onto the A8 motorway.

Not the end of the world – Joséphine will work it out.

But it turned out that Joséphine wasn’t entirely unhappy with this mistake, as she just took us a slightly different way that got us heading in more-or-less the right direction, with roughly the same ETA.

Remember the other day after our Aix-en-Provence walking tour and we just wanted to do a nice drive in the country – on the Route Cézanne towards Le Tholonet – and we simply couldn’t find it? Well as luck would have it, this morning’s wrong turn took us directly into Le Tholonet.

And while I hate to sound like I’m complaining, Le Tholonet wasn’t that exciting or scenic, and I don’t think we missed much.

It felt like we travelled on all sorts of roads today: pretty ones, rural ones, places that felt like driving in Australia, busy roads, coastal roads, scenic roads, and through some bigger townships.

Because we were on the minor roads – the “N” roads and the “D” roads – there was the usual speeding up, slowing down, taking the 2nd exit from a roundabout, etc.

And before you knew it, we were out in the country again with rolling hills and grapevines as far as the eye could see. Some of the roads gave Claude a chance to give his horses a gallop, with several roads at 80km/h or 90km/h.

For quite some time on one of those roads I was stuck behind someone who – like me – was trying to stay on the speed limit.

My observation of France is that they have lots of speed cameras, but they warn you when one is coming up. So you see a sign that shows a car and something resembling radio waves engulfing it, and that seems to indicate that there may be a speed camera soon, although – like at home – that particular camera might not actually be in use at the moment.

There does not appear to be any mobile speed cameras, or hidden police cars. The police seem to be very transparent about when and where you are liable for a speeding ticket.

But despite the fact that in some places there are no speed cameras and everybody speeds, I still try to stick to the speed limit because I just don’t know what I don’t know.

So we were puddling along at about 78km/h in an 80km/h zone behind someone going at a speed that I was comfortable with, and there was a line of cars behind us. If I am holding up traffic, I try to pull over and let them all past, but the guy in front of me clearly hadn’t had that same thought.

Then suddenly the car immediately behind me – a black taxi – started flashing his lights and honking his horn at me, like the whole thing was my fault.

I can only assume that he felt I wasn’t being agressive enough because I hadn’t overtaken the slow dude, so he gave me a practical demonstration of how it is done. He pulled out into the path of oncoming traffic, and went screaming past us both.

Interesting. Not very safe, but interesting.

We had a notion that we would stop somewhere nice for lunch. We are skirting along the coast road down in the Côte d’Azur, and it seemed a bit silly not to stop at a seaside township for lunch.

Saint-Tropez was the place where we really wanted to stop, but all indications are that traffic there is pretty manic, and I didn’t need that additional stress. Neither did MBW as it turned out.

So MBW did some quick Googling and ChatGPTing, and Agay was suggested as a quiet, pretty little seaside township without the stress. And so Joséphine was given new instructions – take us to Nice via Agay.

We had left Aix-en-Provence around 9.00am and it was now close to 10.30am. We were puddling along quite happily, and I was practicing (in my head) all of the french words that I know: Bonjour, Au revoir, boulangerie, patisserie, croissant, baguette …

Me: “Do you think that we should look for a boulangarie nearby and stop for coffee and something to eat?”

So Joséphine got more new instructions. Find us a boulangerie.

And so it came to be that we found ourselves in the sleepy little hamlet of Besse-sur-Issole. A pretty little provincial village with medieval buildings, narrow streets, and people carrying baguettes.

My happy place 😀

It wasn’t entirely clear where we were supposed to go in Besse-sur-Issole, because the signage was confusing and Joséphine had been stood down for a while. So, without hesitation, we made our own decisions.

As it turns out, the first decision we made was a poor tactical decision. I completely misread the “no entry” sign, and found myself eyeball to eyeball with another driver who clearly understood the road rules and signs better than I did. And as luck would have it, the road was so narrow that there was absolutely no opportunity to pass each other, and one of us had to reverse.

That would be me 🙁

But on the bright side, in Besse-sur-Issole there is no flaring of nostrils, grinding of teeth, or honking of horns when a stupid Australian makes a tactical error.

We found the local public carpark, put on our jackets, and went off walking in search of the boulangerie. We turned onto a side street that led to the village square, and guess what we found?

Markets!

I don’t know how she does it …

A very quaint little town square with about a dozen local vendors selling all types of stuff, from bits of material and buttons, to a guy rotisserie-ing chickens and roasting potatoes.

We found the boulangerie and we bought some pastries for smoko, and a baguette for later (lunch).

One of the funny things here in France – particularly the rural areas – is that cafe owners don’t mind if you sit at one of their tables and eat stuff you’ve bought elsewhere, so long as you buy a drink from them.

Sitting outside at a cafe, drinking coffee and watching the world go by is one of those things that we love about France, but haven’t really had the chance to do because everyone here smokes at the outside tables.

But nobody was smoking, so we went in.

The young guy (30’s?) waiting tables said something in French which we didn’t understand, and I responded with my usual “Je ne parlez pas français”.

He responded with “That’s OK, I speak English. Where are you from?”

And so began a fascinating conversation with a guy who was born in Strasbourg (we are going there), spent some time in Nice (we are here tonight), and had spent 6 months in Sydney with his girlfriend, saving money to buy a car so that he could do a lap of Australia.

Unfortunately COVID put the kibosh on those plans and he returned to France, got married, and bought a restaurant in Besse-sur-Issole.

We ordered 2 coffees, ate our pastries, and watched the world go by. And he only charged us €5.00 for the two coffees.

Back in Claude, we continued towards Agay for lunch. We had made another tactical error by not using toilet facilities before departing Besse-sur-Issole, and we figured that we should find one before lunch.

I’ve mentioned before that there are normally toilets on the toll roads, but they are difficult to find in the villages. As luck would have it, we found one at the end (or start, depending on your perspective) of a toll road, so we stopped.

Public toilets are always a bit of a gamble, but these ones were OK. Not the best public toilets I’ve ever used, but not the worst either.

We passed through lots of little townships, many with that same commercial busy-ness feeling to them.

You will recall that we have been trying to stick with the “N” (National) roads because they are better, but we went through a small township called Le Muy where the “N” road was only one car width wide, and one-way.

Some of the places that we drove through felt like driving through Moorooka or Coorparoo, with car yards, McDonald’s, KFC, etc.

We saw a sign for a McDonald’s calling themselves “Les Arcs” (as in the “Golden Arches”) – which we thought was funny – only to discover that it was actually a McDonald’s in the township of Les Arcs.

Not as funny as we’d thought.

We made it to Agay at a bit after 1.00pm for a lunch of salami and cheese on a fresh baguette, sitting there in our warm jackets while watching kids running barefoot on the sand on one side of us, and a lady stripped down to her underwear and sunbaking on the beach on the other side.

The beaches were sandy, but nowhere nearly as nice as Queensland beaches.

After lunch, we loaded Claude up again and headed off on the last run to Nice, taking the coast road. The water was a beautiful blue and the coastline was amazing.

It felt just like driving the Big Sur in California – something that we did pre-COVID.

It wasn’t a fast trip, but it was a spectacular one.

The next big place that we went through was Cannes (as in “The Cannes Film Festival”) and we stopped amongst the Mercedes and Jaguars and took photos of the water.

Coming out of Cannes on the home run to Nice was a nightmare due to all of the roadworks.

I don’t know if there is a Guinness World Records category for the most wrong turns in one journey, but there should be. And I’m claiming it.

Joséphine was confused and uncertain with all of the roadworks. MBW and I sometimnes couldn’t agree on which was the 4th or 5th exit, and Joséphine fluffing around didn’t help any.

MBW found a better way to get to Nice by taking a toll road, but she swapped our phones over (for the navigation) at a crucial point entering a roundabout, and we took another wrong exit.

And then we found ourselves on a motorway. Which was OK, except …

Normally when you get on a motorway, you take a ticket when entering, and then pay the toll when leaving. But sometimes you find yourself at a toll booth at the entry to a motorway without a ticket.

And without a clue either, as it happens.

But this was a special one where you pay your toll at the start of the toll road.

So we paid, and continued on to Nice.

Nice is nice, but very busy. We knew that our apartment overlooks the water, so it will be close to the beach, but the traffic around that area was diabolical. We couldn’t find anywhere to park while we located Farzad (our host for tonight), so I dropped MBW off to look for him while I did loops.

I nearly had a low-speed head-on collision with another vehicle while turning. (MBW doesn’t know that BTW, so it will be news for her when she reads this).

But all worked out. MBW found Farzad, I successfuly navigated to the apartment’s carpark without scratching Claude, and we got into our apartment.

We ducked out to get some groceries so that we don’t starve, and we have now had dinner and coffee, and settling in for the evening.

Did I mention that our apartment overlooks the water?

I might never come home. Farzad is going to have to get me out of here with a crowbar.

Ciao

#Europe2025

Last night, we finished up with a half-baked idea about going to Marseille for the day. The idea itself was probably more than half-baked, but exactly how we were going to get there was still under discussion.

Somewhere between the end of last night’s blog and this morning, it developed into a fully cooked plan.

We’ve definately decided that we are going to Marseille for the day, and we have definately decided that we are leaving Claude at home for the day. We are going by bus.

Or buses, to be more accurate.

Taking the bus is the path of least resistance, where “least resistance” means “least stress”. For everyone.

The day started out as another cracker of a day. Warm, with a forecast high of 20, and sunny with blue skies. We both wore a long-sleeved tee-shirt today, and carried our puffer jackets in case it got cold.

So we hopped into Claude, and drove down to the local park and ride facility, and took the “A” bus into the city. The bus was pretty empty to start, but got more passengers as the trip progressed.

For those of you that know MBW, almost anything can set her off sneezing. Some dust, smoke, someone wearing stong perfume … you name it. And when she sneezes, we will let off 9 or 10 sneezes in quick succession.

Something set her off on the bus to the city, and she started sneezing. Another female passenger standing nearby pulled her scarf up over her nose and mouth, and gave us a dirty look like we were carrying the plague.

Once we got into the city, we bought a return ticket each from Aix to Marseille, a trip of about 30-40 minutes.

I’m not sure what the attraction is in Marseille, but they have a bus leave Aix for Marseille every 5-10 minutes for most of the day.

All reports that we have had are that traffic in Marseille is a bit silly, and we couldn’t see any point in putting ourselves (or our mental health) under any more stress than we needed to.

We got into Marseille at around 10.30am and needed to figure out how to get from the bus station to Port Vieux (the old port), down by the water by 11.00am. We decided to purchase an all day ticket again, because … well, just because.

So that is now 3 tickets that we are carrying around in our wallets, all of which we will need again later in the day. And all of which look … very similar.

The trip down to Port Vieux was interesting. Despite a sign expressly forbdding smoking on the bus, the driver was puffing on an e-cigarette for most of the journey. Multi-tasking at its best.

We got down to Port Vieux just before 11.00am, the starting time for our walking tour. We met up with Mattew, an Italian-born man who has lived in Belgium, but has now been living in Marseille for 7 years.

The group was only small – a couple of ladies from Turkey, a couple from Brazil, ourselves, and a few others that came from places I didn’t catch.

Mattew was interesting, and fortunately most of the history that he gave us aligned with the history that previous walking tour guides have given also.

Marseille was the first settled colony in France, colonised 2600 years ago. Mattew took us through all of the old streets and gave us the history.

There were attacks from Vikings, Romans, Nazis … maybe not in that order, but they all had a go at some time. And then there were kings that created problems, some of which met an untimely end.

I’m not going to try and repeat everything that he said. Let’s face it – I can’t remember what I had for breakfast, so there is no chance that I can regurgitate all of the dates and places and people that we learned about today.

While we started at the old port (Port Vieux), we finished at the new port. One of the places that we stopped at was Le Major Cathederal, which would have to be one of the biggest buildings that I have seen in my life.

I know that when we were in Avignon, I said that the Palais des Papes was the largest I have seen, but that was actually a number of buildings all joined and interconnected.

This was just one enormous church building. And the floor was covered with these tiny ceramic tiles that couldn’t have been more that 1cm x 1cm in size.

Once the tour ended at 1.00pm, we wanted to go and see the Basilique Notre-Dame de la Garde, a basilica that is built at the top of the hill overlooking Marseille, and offering stunning views over the city and the port.

I recall that one of the reasons that we left Claude behind today was to reduce stress, but that bus trip up to the basilica was one of the scarest trips I have ever done. Narrow, windy streets with cars parked just anywhere, and a bus which either didn’t have functioning brakes, or a driver that chose not to use them.

Seriously, he came around one corner so quickly, with a car parked illegally on the corner, and he must have avoided taking off the car’s side mirror by a hair’s breadth. Pretty scary stuff. Or pretty impressive … I’m not sure.

We got up there, took some photos, and then managed to catch the same bus back down the hill again. With the same driver, and the same stress.

We got back down to the new port and went in search of a very late lunch – it was after 2.00pm.

We found a boulangerie – we do like boulangeries – and bought a baguette with tomato and mozzarella on it. We also found a crepe shop and bought a Nutella crepe for dessert.

It was a pretty unusual experience speaking to the crepe guy in broken Frenglish, while the Bee Gee’s “How deep is your love” was blaring out of his tinny little radio.

By this time we’d decided that we had had enough of walking around. We checked with ChatGPT if we had covered off all of the important things to do on a day in Marseille, and other than a boat trip out to one of the islands, we had done it all.

Besides, I couldn’t manage yet another bus/ferry ticket in my wallet.

By now the weather was turning nasty. The wind had picked up and it was getting cold, and it was starting to spit with rain.

We made our way back to Port Vieux (the old port) to catch the metro back to the bus station, and then we caught a double-decker bus back to Aix-en-Provence.

My observation of Marseille is that it is a very busy, very commercial city. Unlike many of the smaller provincial villages that we have been through where everyone walks around with a baguette in their hand, nobody carries a baguette in Marseille.

Which is sad, really 😞

There is an over-representation of McDonald’s, Burger King, Domino’s Pizza and Haviana footwear shops around the city.

In fact, the further south that we have come, the less quaint and provincial the cities have become, and the more commercially-oriented.

Which is a shame, because I have loved the small villages we have been through.

My other observation is that the further south and east we have travelled, the less “French” it is. You can hear people speaking different languages (French, Italian, Arabic, Spanish) because all of those countries are so close to here, and people move around.

We got back to Aix around 5.00pm, and caught the bus back to the carpark to retrieve Claude. The bus home was one of those fancy new “100% electrique” buses. It was overcrowded when we got on, and rapidly progressed to seriously overcrowded, then dangerously overloaded.

I assume that there are rules here that say the driver cannot refuse any passenger a ride – unlike in Australia where the driver can determine that the bus is full, and just go sailing past bus stops.

The driver was not a happy man. There was a lot of gesticulating and muttering to himself things like “Mon dieu” and “Sacreblue”. It was a regular sardine express.

The bus was so full that the driver couldn’t get the front door to close because it kept getting jammed on people in the doorway. I was jammed between some tall dude and the windscreen, and not making the driver’s job any easier because I was blocking his view of the side mirror.

When finally many of the passengers got off and we could all breath again, the driver looked at me and started giving me his thoughts. He must have thought that a) I could understand him, and b) that I cared.

While I don’t know exactly what he said, I’m pretty sure that “what a bunch of morons” is delivered universally in any language.

But I gave him my most sympathetic “Je ne Parlez pas Français” and that was the end of that conversation … until we got off the bus at our stop and I said “Merci beaucoup” (thank you very much) to which he replied (in English) “have a great afternoon”.

We had no plans for dinner, so we decided to stop at a supermarket that we have seen on the way to parking each morning, and see what we can find.

Laurent and Dider’s AirBNB is tastfully decorated and well appointed, but it has very limited cooking facilities which limits our options for dinner.

MBW asked Joséphine to take us back to our accommodation in Nîmes, and off we went.

The more observant among you will note that we are not staying in Nimes, we are staying in Aix-en-Provence. Nimes was a few nights ago.

Interesting.

So that little snafu last night when we couldn’t find the Route Cézanne and we went on a big long 45 minute drive to nowhere may not have been entirely Joséphine’s fault … it’s possible that the problem originated in the front passenger seat …

We found the supermarket, and our limited options for dinner were limited even further with the limited options at the supermarket, but we ended up buying some seriously overpriced eggs, and utilised some of the stuff we already have in the fridge to make an omlette for dinner.

It’s been a great day in Marseille. Another big walking day – we have both done >13,500 steps – but it’s a good tired.

As I said earlier, I’m missing that quaintness of the little provincial villages that we have been through – the ones where you slow down to enter the village, and 2km later you speed up again as you exit it.

But Aix-en-Provence and Marseille have both been nice too.

Tomorrow we leave Laurent and Didier’s place and head to Farzad’s place in Nice for 4 nights. After that we are off into Tuscany, Italy. It feels like we have been travelling forever, but we still have 4 weeks to go.

I’ll let you know if I stop having fun.

Ciao

#Europe2025

I’ve had an epiphany and I have to confess that I feel pretty silly about it.

You will recall that yesterday I forgot to wind up the security screens and so we woke in the dark. I was also confused about the fact that when we did wake, it was still half-dark anyway which was unusual, and I’m pretty sure that I also commented that sunset didn’t occur here in Aix-en-Provence until 8.00pm or so.

It’s almost as though we have had a time shift of an hour … kind of like what happens when daylight savings kicks in.

So it turns out that on the last Sunday in March, all of France – and possibly all of Europe – commence daylight saving time, and clocks are pushed out by an hour. I had known that was going to happen, but I’d completely forgotten.

That explains a great deal of things.

We are here in Aix for three nights, so we have 2 full days to explore.

Today we had a walking tour planned with Benjamin (Benjy), meeting at the Tourist Office in the middle of Aix-en-Provence.

But before I do that, I’m going to wind back to yesterday afternoon after we arrived here. Two things of some note happened.

The first thing that happened was that we noticed a didgeridoo lying on the ground outside the cottage (tiny house) that we are staying in, and we assumed (incorrectly) that Didier was taking the micky out of us. We were having trouble with the lock on the door of the cottage and we had asked him to show us how it worked, and when he came over we asked him about the didgeridoo.

He looked at us blankly and said (in his strong french accent) that he had no idea what it was, that a friend had given it to him, and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with it.

So I demonstrated how it is used (… very poorly, I might add …) we explained to him that it is quite valuable, and showed him some YouTube videos of aboriginals playing the instrument. He was so impressed that he took it inside for safe-keeping.

Or possibly to remove any opportunity for me to play it again.

The other thing that happened was that we were keen to get into the city yesterday afternoon, so we asked Didier what was the best way to do that, especially noting that it was a Sunday afternoon.

He told us to park at a particular parking station. So that’s what we planned to do.

I mentioned yesterday that Aix is much bigger than I expected it would be, but how hard can it be to get into the city, and get into a parking station, when you’ve got Google Maps as your wingman?

So off we went.

It soon became quite apparent that Aix is much bigger and much busier than we had anticipated, and at one stage I found myself in the position of being first off from a set of lights, turning left into the main street.

When in France, just remember “tight right, loose left”. How hard can it be?

Let me tell you that there is nothing quite so heartbreaking than taking a left turn into a street and realising that nobody behind you is following, but they are all going somewhere else. That will be because Claude found himself travelling along a bus lane, while all of the other vehicles took the correct turn and took the part of the road designated for cars.

Anyhow it was all sorted with a quick (and desperate) u-turn and I left it for Joséphine to figure out an alternative route to get us where we were going.

Which brings us to today. A walking tour starting from the centre of the city, near where we parked yesterday in the carpark.

Full of excitment and optimism, but no desire to drive back into the city and battle workday traffic … so we did some investigations and found that there was a Park-n-Ride facility about 6km away where we could park for €3.50 for the day in a secure, underground parking garage, and that price included the cost of my bus fare, plus the fare of any accompanying passengers in the car, and our fares back again this afternoon.

Much cheaper than parking in town, and much less stressful than driving. And probably cheaper than that fine for driving in a bus lane that will arrive in our letterbox in 6 months or so, after they track me down.

Remember that important detail – the parking station was about 6km and 6 minutes drive away from home. That will be important later.

We got Claude safely parked, found the bus stop, and got on. We arrived in town about 9.45am, with the walking tour with Benjy planned to start at 10.30.

We had a half-baked idea that we might make a trip down to Marseille tomorrow. The drive to Marseille will be nice, but what to do with Claude when we get there could be a problem, so we went into the Tourism Office and asked about the bus service to Marseille.

And so a plan was hatched to take Claude to the Park-n-Ride again tomorrow, take a bus into town, then get another bus from town (Aix) to Marseille. But that will be tomorrow’s news, because it could change.

It probably depends on whether we are still married.

After speaking with the Tourism Office, we had a quick poke around town and waited for Benjy to arrive.

Benjy was a surprise package. Young guy, and very, very British.

Not French. British. (The first thing that I inadvertently said to him was “You’re not very French!”)

Turns out that his mother is French and his Father is British. They met, married and moved back to Britain, and have now returned to Aix-en-Provence to retire.

(On a side note, he also said that his Grandfather was a Jew, but his Grandmother was French, so he is not a Jew, he is only Jew-ish. Boom, boom.)

And so Benjy shared his love of Aix-en-Provence with us. He also moonlights as an English teacher at the university in summer, and does walking tours the rest of the year.

An important clarification, though. I have always though that the pronunciation of “Aix” was “Axe”, but I’m wrong. The correct pronunciation is “X”. Or “Ex”.

X-en-Provence, like experience.

It was a really informative walking tour. He told us about the history of the area, when and why the Romans came in and took over (which goes a long way to explaining the Colosseums we have been seeing everywhere), who was in charge, and so forth.

He took us on a big rambling walk of the old French parts of the city, and then into the old(er) Roman parts of the city. He showed us the school where Paul Cézanne (artist) and Émile Zola (novelist) attended and were childhood friends.

Apparently nobody liked Cézanne’s paintings when he was alive, so nobody wanted them after he died. Well, nobody smart wanted them.

So (apparently) many of his paintings were sold to “stupid Americans” who thought that they were buying something special because it was “French”, and now all of the wealth of Cézanne’s paintings is held elsewhere, not in France.

The last “stupid American” who sold a Cézanne only got $260m for it …

He told us how there were many mansions built along the main street – Cours Mirabeau – by Generals and nobles, and that the bigger the doors that they have, the more prestigious they were.

He also showed us some really important stuff like where the best pizza shop is (and what to buy), and where the best patisserie is in Aix-en-Provence.

And we went to both for lunch, of course.

He told us some fun facts, like a boulangerie cannot call itself a boulangerie unless they actually bake the products on site. If they bring them in from elsewhere – even if it is their own bakery somewehere else – they can only call themselves a patisserie.

We also learned that while France has 3 principles – Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité – Aix-en-Provence actually have 5, adding Generosity and Probity.

And another fun fact: we learned that all cafes in Aix face south to pick up the sunshine, because the French love to sit outside at cafes and people-watch.

One of the things that France is known for is its cheese. But in this area of France, it is (apparently) too hot for cows, so goat’s cheese is a major product.

Following the walking tour, we went off in search of lunch. Benjy had recommended a pizza place called Lumberjack Pizza. Now, I know what you are thinking … we are in France and that doesn’t sound very French. And if we are going to eat pizza, we should wait for Italy. Right?

But we went there anyway, because we were told that they serve a goat’s cheese and lavender honey pizza – a speciality of the area.

And it was so good.

After lunch we just decided to do a bit of a wander around the streets of the old town and see what there is to see … but experience has taught us that a really good walking tour covers off everything we want to see, and all we can do is go back and take another look at some of the more interesting things.

I have spoken previously about the narrow streets and narrow footpaths. I have also spoken previously about the number of electric vehicles around because of the emission problems that they have in many of these towns and cities. All of that creates a new problem.

We were wandering aimlessly around the old city on streets with virtually no footpath, so we were walking on the streets. Electric cars make virtually no sound, so you get a bit of a surprise when a vehicle has come up silently behind you and honks their horn to get you off the street.

It was another cracker of a day. Blue skies, and a light breeze. By lunchtime it was pushing 20 degrees and we were down to short sleeves and carrying all of our jackets.

By about 3.00pm we had seen everything that we wanted to see, so we asked ChatGPT for a suggestion for a scenic drive around Aix, and it proposed a nice drive on the Route Cézanne, to Le Tholonet and Puyloubier.

They didn’t like Cézanne when he was alive. Now everything is named after him!

Remember earlier I said that we parked 6km and 6 minutes away from our AirBNB?

We asked Joséphine to take us on the Route Cézanne, setting our initial destination for Le Tholonet. That was a 20 minute trip in the countryside.

So off we went … a couple of wrong turns, a missed exit on the roundabout. Joséphine tells me to take the 4th exit from the roundabout, and I lose count going around the wrong way.

After one particular wrong turn, Joséphine announced that she was “recalculating” and that we should follow the A-something road for 15km, which seemed a bit far, but then with my appalling sense of direction, anything is possible.

It’s a funny thing driving on the right-hand side of the road because your mind starts to play tricks on you. You train youself that everything is back to front.

You use your left hand to operate the blinker.

You use your right hand to select the correct gear or release the handbrake.

You look to the right (not the left) to check your centre rear-view mirror.

And because you spend so much time telling yourself that everything is back-to-front, you start to make silly mistakes: a “turn right” announcement is translated to “turn left”.

“Be in the left lane” translates to “be in the right lane”.

Argh! So it might not all be Joséphine’s fault after all.

After a 45 minute loop around Aix, we found ourselves driving past the turnoff to our AirBNB which – you may recall – was 6km and 6 minutes from where we started at the Park-n-Ride.

Not to be beaten, we randomly picked a nearby township that looked interesting and set that as our destination.

The winner was Saint-Cannat – a sleepy little township of 1,500 people where nothing ever happens.

Except for today.

I’m fairly certain that every single one of them was out in their vehicle, either parked (or double-parked), or driving around the township collecting their kids from school.

On the bright side, we got cheap fuel for Claude, and I snapped a picture of a McDonald’s with a green and yellow sign.

We decided to head for home. We got back a bit after 5.00pm, and MBW did another load of washing.

Our impression of Aix is that it is a very pretty, and very clean city. Bigger than we expected, but a beautiful spot to visit and spend a few days.

Last night we were pretty excited to find “Outback Truckers” on one of the many channels on the TV in our AirBNB. But sadly it was all overdubbed with French, so we couldn’t follow along.

We need to do some more planning for our trip to Marseille tommorow and weigh up the stress of driving there, versus the convenience of getting there quicker than public transport.

Unless of course we make another tactical error and end up on the A8 and find ourselves heading back towards Paris.

Don’t laugh.

Ciao

#Europe2025

I did something silly this morning. Actually, I did something silly last night that caused me to do something silly this morning.

Many of the places that we have stayed have external metal shutters on the windows – I assume for security and privacy. There is a handle inside the window that you use to wind the shutters up and down.

Yesterday afternoon we got home mid-afternoon and had a bit of a lazy afternoon. We had walked 15,000-20,000 steps each day for the last couple of days and we were tired.

I did some blogging while MBW read her book and watched The Rookie.

When it started to get dark, I rolled down the shutters in the lounge room of our apartment. Not long after, when I went for a shower, I rolled down the one in the bedroom also.

Normally we don’t wind them all the way down to ensure that we can get some light in, but I wasn’t really paying attention.

I’ve been sleeping really well here at Kate’s place in Nîmes. Not everywhere that we have stayed has a matress and pillow that agrees with me, but Kate got it right, and I have been sleeping like a baby.

I’m alseep within seconds of my head hitting the pillow, and I don’t wake all night until about 7.00am when the sun comes up.

Last night was no different, except that I woke really early this morning. Maybe 4.30 or 5.00am because it was still very dark. I was really annoyed because I have been sleeping so well, and now I’ve woken early.

I looked at my phone to discover … that it was 7.00am. Those stupid roller shutters … I had wound them both all the way down and forgotten to wind them up before bed.

Not a great start to the day 🙁

There was a little bit of confusion with our booking at Kate’s apartment in Nîmes. For reasons that I don’t understand, she had us moving out this morning and more guests moving in this afternoon, and nobody was available to clean the unit between guests. So she asked how we felt about cleaning the unit before we departed.

Interesting concept.

In any case, before I had the opportunity to respond to say “isn’t that what I’m paying a cleaning fee for?”, she said that she had solved the problem.

It turns out that she convinced the people coming in after us to clean the apartment, make the bed, get out new linen, etc.

All power to them!

So we packed all of our stuff and gave the place a good wipedown anyway, and threw away the rubbish.

We were pretty early, so we both went for a walk to retrieve Claude from the parking station a few blocks away and bring him back to pack, and head off.

Once again, MBW headed off in completely the wrong direction to find the carpark, and once again we arrived at exactly the correct location (stairs down to the carpark) to collect Claude.

I don’t know how she does it.

I’ve mentioned how narrow the streets are. And the carpark ramps. And – it turns out – the spaces in the underground carpark. So narrow that if you park normally, you are at serious risk of being unable to get into your car when you need to, without being a contortionist.

I can’t even touch my toes, so there is no way in God’s little green earth that I will be able to twist myself inside out to get into Claude.

But when I parked Claude the other night after our drive, I jagged a once-in-a lifetime parking space at the end of a row between two posts. Wide enough to be a wheelie space, without actually being a wheelie space.

I checked. Twice.

Back to the apartment, and – once again – there was absolutely no street parking available outside, so I did the old double park and hazard lights trick.

When in Rome …

I parked across the front entrance to the apartment block figuring that it wouldn’t be a problem … and a sweet old man came up and clearly wanted to get into the front door of the building, and couldn’t. So I moved Claude and we (MBW and I) had a nice chat with him.

We established very quickly that he could not speak any language that we spoke, and likewise we could not speak any language that he spoke.

I gave him my very best “Je ne parlez pas Français” (I don’t speak French), and he smiled at me like I was an idiot. So maybe he doesn’t speak French either … ?

So we had a lovely conversation – both of us speaking our own language, and neither of us understanding what the other was saying … but there was lots of smiling and nodding.

In any case, he seemed absolutely delighted with the outcome of the conversation, and I was concerned that I may have inadvertently promised him MBW’s hand in marriage, or I may have promised to service his car for him.

Who knows.

But he toddled up the stairs, and it seems that he is our neighbour … so maybe he was just pleased that we were moving out.

We loaded up Claude, asked Joséphine to take us to Arles (en route to Aix-en-Provence), and off we went.

Lots and lots of cars parked in Nîmes on a Sunday morning, but not a soul to be seen on the streets. You could have fired a cannon up the main street and not hit anyone.

Which meant a quiet, pleasant and stress-free trip out of Nîmes and towards Arles, our first stop for the day.

Unfortunately, for any number of reasons, we forgot to instruct Joséphine that we had plenty of time today and we wanted to go the scenic route. We were leaving around 9.15am, it was a <2 hour drive to Aix via the “no tolls” option, and we couldn’t check-in to tonight’s accommodation until 4.00pm.

We turned up at a toll booth, realised our error, took a ticket, and did some low-altitude flying down to motorway to Arles.

A few comments on French toll booths.

Firstly, you have to stop at the boom gate, pay your fee, and wait for the gate to go up. That’s pretty disappointing after you have been doing 130km/h for the last little while. I can still remember when they introduced coin baskets on the Gateway Bridge, and you needed to stop and throw your coins in. Even then I thought that the need to actually stop was pretty archaic … yet they still do it here in France, even if you have an eTag.

Secondly, some of their toll booths are as big as a Roman Colosseum – with lots of gates for payment, that all merge back into 2 lanes at the other side, creating chaos.

And finally, I have seen a couple of times now Police waiting for people to come through the toll gates, and then get taken aside for some kind of interview. I don’t know what they have done wrong, and it hasn’t happened to me (yet), but I guess it’s only a matter of time.

Arles is a pretty little town, and quite dead on a windy Sunday morning. We drove around aimlessly for a while, then stopped in a parking station briefly to consult with ChatGPT for the top 5 things to do in Arles.

It turns out that the top 5 include a number of things that aren’t exactly in Arles, but some way away, and the other option is a Roman Arena in beautiful condition.

Forgive me, but once you’ve see one Roman Colosseum, you’ve seen them all. I would never be so flippant about baguettes or pastries, but Roman Colosseums … hmmm.

So we did some shopping in Monoprix – our other favourite place to shop for things that we don’t need – and then asked Joséphine to take us towards Marseille instead. Marseille is down on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea (I think), with a planned lunch stop at Port de Carro, a little seaside town.

The road was different to anything that we have seen before in France. It was the most like Queensland that we have seen, and we could have been driving down in Northern NSW near Cabarita Beach. Open spaces, scrubby vegetation, sparse landscape.

When we arrived at Port de Carro, it was just like driving through Coolangatta. There were surf shops, people wearing thongs, little shops … and of course a boulangerie.

We stopped in and bought a warm baguette and a citrus cream-filled pastry thing (see photo below) for lunch, then drove around the corner and sat on a park bench that felt very much like Kirra or Coolangatta, and ate our lunch. Salami, cheese, tomato, and mayo on a fresh warm baguette, followed by pastry and coffee.

If eating warm baguettes and pastries for lunch everyday is wrong, then I don’t want to be right 🙁

So good.

After lunch we went for a bit of a walk around the beach and watched some crazy French people in their swimmers enjoying the water. The water was so blue and clear, but I imagine it was cold too.

But tucked into that little corner of the beach out of the wind, it was very nice. I almost felt like taking my shoes off and having a paddle.

I’ve learned a new French expression today, and you never know when it could come in handy.

On our little walk we found a fully automatic public toilet (don’t ask) which can speak french better than I can. Inside was a sticker with two options:

1. Débit important (big flush), and
2. Débit faible (little flush)

It’s always good to learn new things.

By now it was around 1.00pm and we had seen everything we were going to see without going back to Arles for the Roman collesseum.

We messaged our hosts for tonight (Laurent and Didier) and asked if there was any chance that we could drop our bags off early and go off exploring … and they said yes.

So we headed to our accommodation for tonight which – in the interests of full transparency – is nothing like what we expected. It is essentially a tiny home behind Laurent’s home, way out in the country at the end of a narrow lane.

But it’s clean and comfortable and Laurent and Didier are very friendly and helpful.

We dropped off our bags, and went back out to do some exploring in Aix-en-Provence. It turns out that Aix-en-Provence – while a very pretty town – is also nothing like what we expected.

We were thinking that it would be a quaint little country town with all of the local grandmas selling home made jam in the quiet main street … but it is a very vibrant and busy township (population 150,000 people) with a beautiful main street. And it felt like all 150,000 of them were out enjoying the beautiful weather.

You will recall that I’ve been saying how cold it has been? It was 22 degrees walking in town this afternoon and very sunny. Not a cloud in the sky – an absolute cracker of a day!

Way too good to be working.

We had a bit of a wander and noticed that the closer we get towards Italy, the more Italian influence we see. But we want to put off eating pizza, pasta and gelato until we reach the promised land 🙂

We bought some groceries for dinner, and headed home around 5.15pm for a coffee and a rest.

Tomorrow we have a walking tour of the city, and by then we will have better bearings for what else to do the following day (Tuesday) on our own.

Laurent & Didier have a washing machine available, so MBW has made a pre-emptive strike and done a load of washing to reduce the chances of another underwear crisis.

It’s 6.00pm now. The sun doesn’t set until 8.02pm tonight, and it’s still warm outside (19 degrees), so I might slap on some coconut oil and go outside and work on my tan.

Ciao

#Europe2025

Something strange has happened. Something very strange indeed, and I can’t explain it.

When I got dressed this morning in my favourite jeans and we went out walking to find the bus stop, my jeans were loose. Not falling down around my knees loose, but loose enough to be annoying.

Loose enough that I needed to tighten my belt an extra notch.

Why is this strange?

Well, if you were to go back and count the number of times that I’ve mentioned the words boulangerie , or croissant, or baguette (… and please don’t do that, by the way …) I suspect that I have eaten enough to cause my GP some serious concern.

And yet my jeans are loose.

I can’t really explain that except to suggest that the 15,000-20,000 steps that I (and we) are doing most days is having more of an effect than all of those baguettes and croissants that I have eaten.

I’ve mentioned previously that it appears to be a national pastime here in regional France to walk around with a fresh, warm baguette in your hand. And why wouldn’t you? They are cheap (about €1.10 each), and so, so good.

And when you think that there is a boulangerie in every township you travel through, it is hardly surprising.

Remember yesterday, we stopped at a boulangerie in the middle of nowhere and bought lunch at some time after 1.00pm? The baker (if that’s what he is called) was in the process of making more baguettes. They bake them all day long, and often don’t close until 7.00pm when they stop selling them.

Sure, you can buy them in the local Monoprix or E.Leclerc. They are a bit cheaper, but mass produced and nowhere near as good.

I’m seriously going to have to find a French bakery (boulangerie) when we get back home. Seriously.

So today – Saturday – we had a walking tour with Bastian.

To be completely honest, we’d forgotten about it, but when we got a reminder of the time and place, we made plans.

Figured out how to get to the starting place in town. Bus was our most likely option.

Wouldn’t it be nice if every township in France with a bus service used the same system. Lyon uses TCL. Nîmes uses Tango.

So we had breakfast and headed out. The temperature was cool (9 degrees that felt like 7 degrees), so we packed scarves and jackets and asked Google Maps to take us to the bus stop, about a 4 minute walk away. It was also forecast to be windy.

Once again, I have no sense of direction here. The streets are all narrow and just seem to go in every direction. I feel like we should be heading one way, and Google Maps says to go a different way.

But we got to the bus stop and the bus pulled in, right on schedule. The number 9 bus.

We got on, and I gave the lady bus driver my best smile and said “Je ne parlez pas Français” (I don’t speak French). I then showed her my preprepared Google Translate screen saying I wanted 2 all day bus tickets, please.

Transaction completed, and we were on our way.

You know how I have been saying how scary it is driving down these narrow streets in Claude, and trying not to hit anything? The lady bus driver did it in a bus. Same streets, but in a bus. And I’m pretty sure that it was a banana bus.

She must have nerves of steel.

Everything is close here in Nîmes. We only went 3 stops and we were in the city.

We were about 45 minutes early, so we poked around, took a few photos, and got a coffee to sustain us … and warm us up.

Bastian turned up right on time, along with a young Italian guy who went to school in France, so was fluent in Italian, French and English.

Don’t you just hate a show-off?

The final couple turned up – John and Grace from Oregan (USA) – so that made Bastian plus 5 of us. John and Grace had just retired, so were about the same age as us.

Experience with these “free” Get Your Guide walking tours is mixed. I say “free” because you pay what you think it is worth. Many of the guides we have had previously look like they shop at a 2nd hand clothes shop and sleep on the street. And consequently we have probably over-donated to them because we feel sorry for them, not because they did a great job.

But Bastian was the best that we have ever had. He was friendly (shook hand all around and asked us to introduce ourselves), well dressed, fluent in English, and addressed us all as “my friends”.

His octagonal glasses frames were a bit weird, but who am I to judge.

He was interesting, engaging and happy to answer questions. Probably being in a small group helped too, because some groups have been up to 20 people.

He showed us lots of interesting monuments around the city and explained the significance of each. He took us through quirky, narrow streets and showed us all sorts of interesting things.

He took us to the food markets, and showed us all of the best things to buy for lunch.

He also showed us a shop that sells a blue fabric that was invented in Nîmes. Denim.

He explained that the word denim is a joining of “de Nîmes” (of Nîmes). BTW I checked on Wikipedia, and it was confirmed. If you can’t trust Wikipedia, who can you trust?

He explained about the aquaduct, and the original water source in Nîmes.

It was a really informative tour and we gave him an extra tip 🙂

By the time that the tour was over (12.00pm), we were getting hungry so we headed back to the markets to buy some of the things that he suggested.

These little pies that are stuffed with fish and octopus. Plus something called “brandade” which is like a dip, but made of poached fish (cod) and oil, and mixed with milk and garlic, which we ate on a fresh baguette.

We also found some “pomme beignets” which is like a pineapple fritter but made with apple (pomme) and covered with sugar.

We found a park bench in one of the town squares, and ate our lunch.

Do you remember I said that the forecast was windy? It was almost cyclonic, and the wind must have been blowing straight from the artic circle – it was freezing.

And when I say that the wind was almost cyclonic, I’m not kidding.

Just near us when we were eating lunch, there was a toy shop with a stand of bikes and toys on display outside the shop. It blew over.

There was also a restaurant with outdoor tables and chairs, and we watched (with some amusement) as the wind was blowing tables and chairs over, while the waiter was frantically trying to reset them all back up again.

In the end he just stacked and chained them together so that they wouldn’t all blow away.

The other thing that we really wanted to see was the arena. It is like the Colosseum but smaller, and built in the same style. And built in the 1st century.

Of interest, while it is an ancient Roman monument, it is still used today for various events including singers such as Elton John.

While we were there, they were setting it up for an upcoming tennis tournament.

I’m not going to try to explain it … it was simply enormous. Look at the photos.

We were hoping that there might have been some executions planned for today, or even some people being fed to the lions … but there was nothing scheduled 🙁

We spent an hour or so doing a self-guided tour of the arena.

When we were up at the very top level, we were genuinely concerned that the wind was going to blow us off, so we headed back down and finished the tour.

WH&S was clearly not a priority 2000 years ago. But then I guess when you watch gladiators fight each other to the death, and feed Christians to the lions, losing a few invited guests over the edge probably isn’t too much of an issue.

We’d had a great day looking around Nîmes, but by 3.00pm we were done and ready to head back to the apartment.

It was cold and very windy, and becoming unpleasant.

We found a Monoprix and bought some stuff for dinner, then found a bus that dropped us off near home, and had a quiet afternoon/night in.

Dinner and the last episode of Reacher, and we are ready for bed. Another 15,000 steps today.

Tomorrow we pack up, collect Claude, and ask Joséphine to take us to Aix-en-Provence. This is a little place that I absolutely insisted that we stay in on this trip.

We will make a couple of stops on the way at other places that ChatGPT says we really must see.

Three nights in Aix, 4 nights in Nice, and then we are heading into Italy to buzz around Tuscany for a while. I’m going to have to learn how to say “I don’t speak Italian …:

Ciao

#Europe2025

Today was a rest day.

I use the term “rest day” loosely, because there is really no such thing as a rest day – we have to pack in as much as possible every day.

But today – Friday – we had nothing specifically planned, so we loosely proposed to do a bit of a drive around Nîmes.

If you do a Google search (or ask ChatGPT – my new best friend) for the top 5 things to do around Nîmes, it struggles to narrow it down to just 5. There is so much history – ancient history – around here, and so much to see.

So we decided on a day seeing ruins. Which is funny really, because MBW gets to see a ruin every morning when I get out of bed, especially that I am now retired.

We made a loose arrangement to do a loop from home (Nîmes), to Uzès which is a well-preserved medieval township, then on to the Pont du Gard then to Avignon, and then home.

A nice relaxing drive in the country.

I know that I keep banging on about how different it is to drive here in France, but it is completely unlike anything I have ever experienced.

There is no logic to the streets, or the way that they are laid out.

Although if you can imagine the buildings and streets 500 years ago or more, it probably does make sense. There is no “planning” for where houses have been built – they just popped up anywhere, and the tracks between houses have – in time – become roads.

Roads that are often unsuitable for vehicles.

You don’t see any Landcruisers here, and the only “big” car we saw was in Dijon, and that was in the yard of an apartment complex that was supposed to be where the parliamentarians live.

It was a Bentley, and I don’t know how they get that thing around the streets without getting it scratched. You certainly couldn’t take it into underground carparks!

The drive from home to Nîmes is only about 25km, so it shouldn’t take long. Right?

The first challenge of the day was to find Claude. We parked him in the (provided) underground parking garage nearby. That was a major criteria for everywhere we stayed – it had to have free parking available.

Trying to find street parking for Claude would have been a nightmare, and would have resulted either in divorce or one of us coming home in a box in the cargo hold of the aircraft – neither of which would have been a suitable outcome for any future holidays that we planned.

MBW has a super-power that I have never fully appreciated. It is said (not by me, but I’ve heard it said) that women make bad navigators, but MBW has an amazing sense of direction.

We set out to find Claude, and I was quietly fuming because we were clearly heading in the wrong direction, and then suddenly we popped out of a side street onto a more major road, and the entrance to the carpark was just across the street.

Go figure.

This particular road was two lanes each way, with a very wide (10m wide) median strip that had fountains and greenery … and as luck woulkd have it, it had an open air market in progress.

I actually think that MBW’s “sense of direction” was not so much for the carpark, but for the markets and they just happened to be in the same place 🙂

So we did a quick browse of the markets. They sell the most random collection of stuff including antiques (including a grandfather clock!), second-hand homewares (like a thrift shop), fresh meat and seafood, bakery items, etc.

We found this little patisserie stand that had these things (see photo below) that MBW had always wanted to try. It looked and tasted a bit like an almond croissant, but was more bready and less sweet.

Hard to describe. But tasty.

Editor’s note: MBW tells me it is called a sacristain.

The markets went on forever, so we abandoned that and went in search of Claude again.

Now this was the challenge. We found the entry to the carpark where cars go in, but we couldn’t for the life of us find the door and stairway where you walked into the carpark. No point asking me for my opinion, because I still thought that the carpark was in a totally different direction.

MBW had put a pin in Google Maps when we dropped Claude off, and funnily enough, the pin took us straight to the doorway and staircase, brilliantly disguised as a plain, unmarked door that would have made Maxwell Smart proud.

Out onto the street and we pointed Claude’s nose towards Uzès. The road out of Nimes towards Uzès was marked as though it was a “D” road.

As best as I can figure, here in France “A” roads are toll roads (or at least, major highways where you can sit at 130km/h all day). “N” roads are national highways (that’s what the “N” stands for…) where you can often do 80-90km/h, but you are constantly speeding up and slowing down for roundabouts and townships. And thet have a lot of traffic on them – fellow cheapskates like us who prefer not to pay tolls.

But townships have boulangeries, and we like boulangeries.

And then you have the “D” roads that are the tertiary roads that are often windy, narrow and prone to lots of traffic and little progress. Joséphine’s instructions on “D” roads are typically “.. in 900m, turn right, take the third exit from the roundabout, travel for 1.1km then take the left lane and take the 1st exit of the roundabout. Travel 500m and …”

You get the idea.

And after that are the surface roads that are – at best – goat tracks 🙂

I know that I have spoken about the roads (and drivers) previously, and I am genuinely not complaining, but they are just so different to driving in Australia.

Our streets are kind of laid out in some pattern, but the streets here just go everywhere. No straight lines, just twists and turns.

And it feels like you are constantly swerving around houses and buildings that just sprang up and now can’t be moved.

Plus there are many streets where the passage is just too narrow for two cars, so you get a sign with a big black arrow pointing one direction (that is the priority vehicle that has right of way), and a smaller red arrow pointing the opposite direction (which is the vehicle that has to give way).

Google Maps selected the best route to Uzès which was a pleasant, scenic drive, but very windy and slow. Which I guess explains why a trip of 25km is often listed with an expected duration of an hour.

Nothing really to report about the trip to Uzès, except to say that one minute you are driving through narrow, suburban streets, and the next thing you are driving through the countryside. Rolling green hills, grapevines, medieval villages, beautiful old bridges.

Once we got out of Nîmes it was a pretty drive.

One of the most frustrating things for me here is that there is often nowhere to stop at the side of the road and take a photo. We crossed a beautiful old bridge, but we simply could not find anywhere even remotely close to stop for a photo, so we had to keep going.

We got to Uzès and did a couple of laps of the city, but traffic and parking was a nightmare. Why don’t these people have jobs? So we decided to try to park outside of the village a little, and walk back.

There were a few wrong turns – maybe my fault, maybe MBW’s, probably Joséphine being indecisive.

I mentioned that there is often nowhere to park for a photo. The bigger curse is that when you find yourself on the wrong road, even if you can find somewhere to stop, it is almost impossible to turn around and go back.

My French is getting better. I’ve learned to look for the word “gratuit” (free), so when you see a sign that says “parking gratuit” (free parking), you jump at it. Into the parking lot about 5 minutes walk out of Uzès, locked up Claude, and we headed off walking.

Now I’m going to digress for a moment.

Being caravaners ourselves, one thing that we are always on the lookout for when we travel is other caravans on the road. And we have hardly seen any. From Paris down to Lyon, I could probably count on one hand how many we have seen.

But now that we are getting further south, we are starting to see a few more. Not like travelling in rural Queensland when you can see 100+ caravans travelling the other way in a day; here we might see two or three.

But in the free carpark outside of Uzès, there were a couple of dozen campers (like Winnebagos). Clearly that seemed like a good (free) place to camp for a few nights, because we have seen very few caravan parks.

Uzès is yet another interesting medieval town. It’s in beautiful condition with a small central market square, and – like all of the others we have seen – it feels like you are stepping back in time.

Also like most other small townships that we have been through, public toilets are non-existant, but we bought coffee that earned us the right to use the facilities at a cafe.

From Uzès we moved on to the Pont du Gard, an ancient bridge and aquaduct built in the 1st century and about 20 minutes down the road. It is both beautiful, and amazing that it was able to be built 2000 years ago. I cannot comprehend how they got the enormous sandstone blocks of the arches up into place … although I suspect that slave labour was cheap and plentiful.

Here’s a fun fact: the engineering on the aqueduct is so good that they managed a 25cm fall in every kilometre. And that was 2000 years ago.

We would have liked to have done a guided tour of the facility, but the only tours available were in French, and as we have determined already, our French is limited to “Je ne parlez pas Français” (I don’t speak French).

From the Pont du Gard, our next stop was Avignon. We wanted to see Avignon for a couple of reasons – it is both another beautiful, ancient walled medieval city, and one of our grandies (Elias) has a thing for Emma the yellow Wiggle and her singing of “Sur Le Pont D’Avignon” (all about dancing on the bridge of Avignon), so we had to see it and send him a photo.

It was after 1.00pm and we were getting hungry, so we looked for a boulangerie on the way to Avignon and found a beautiful little place in the middle of nowhere that got really good reviews … so we stopped.

We got a chicken and salad baguette and a couple of filled croissants (lemon and orange), and we ate in the car at the side of the road.

On a side note, we have seen hardly any McDonald’s here in France, but here is a fun fact: McDonald’s have changed their corporate colours in France from red and yellow, to green and yellow in an effort to set themselves apart as environmentally friendly and sustainable.

But regardless of their colours, we have hardly seen any of them as we have driven around. But seriously – why would you eat McDonald’s when you can get fresh baguette with chuncks of chicken, beautiful cheese, and salad for less money and still be stuffed to the gills?

And the filled croissants … I’m going to have to learn the words to the French national anthem. My goodness they were good.

We had been warned that Avignon was one of those “hot spots” in France where tourists are targetted. With Claude and his red number plates, we might as well have a flashing neon sign above the car saying “tourist” … so we were keen to visit on a day when we were carrying no luggage so – if the worst happened and we were broken into – we had nothing of value to lose from the car.

Avignon traffic was a nightmare, just like pretty much everywhere else in France that we have been.

A couple of wrong turns and a little bit of indecisiveness on Joséphine’s part, and we looped the old walled city a couple of times before we got our approach right.

I confess that I am starting to turn into a French driver. I’ve realised that being polite, putting on your blinker and waiting for someone to let you in is never going to happen … so you just put on your blinker and start merging.

The guy in the Mercedes in the next lane has more to lose that I do, and a space for me will become available.

It’s funny how French drivers can be really selfish and arrogant, yet they can also be very polite and thoughtful.

We were trying to get into the carpark of the old city. Joséphine told me to turn left in 50m, and MBW told me to turn left NOW, and I found myself in an impossibly narrow left-turn lane in the middle of a very busy road, with two lanes of cars travelling bumper-to-bumper on either side of me, and I was stuck.

So I put on my right blinker and tried to merge back into the traffic … like that was going to happen.

Seriously, I wouldn’t have let me in!

And then some French driver felt sorry for me and stamped on his brakes and flashed his lights, giving me an opening to get back into the traffic again.

Maybe he saw the red number plates … ?

We got into the carpark, parked Claude, and went out in search of the Pont d’Avignon.

You have to pay an entry fee to see many of these monuments, so we bought the multiple entry pass for the Pont d’Avivnon (Bridge of Avignon) and the Palais des Papes (the Pope’s Palace).

I didn’t know that the Popes made Avignon their home at any time – I thought that they all lived in the Vatican – but there were 6 papal conclaves held in Avignon during the 14th century.

Various kings, then Popes built and extended and modified the building over many years, and I would have to say that it is one of the largest and most impressive buildings that I have ever seen.

Think of the largest old stone church that you know – St John’s Cathederal in Brisbane. That would be the size of the Palais des Papes grand hall where large gatherings of dignitaries occurred. It is an absolute labyrinth of buildings and rooms, all interconnected by tunnels and doorways.

The “formal kitchen” had the biggest fireplace that I have ever seen. And the Pope’s formal study was probably the size of a small house.

In fact, the place was so big, that it took us an hour and a half just to do a self guided tour.

I have to say though that they obviously never realised that the bigger you build them, the harder they are to keep warm.

By the time we had finished the tour, we did a quick walk around the old town but we were getting tired, so we decided to head home. We had about a 45 minute trip back to Nîmes, and we had nothing planned for dinner.

It was about 5.30pm, starting to get dark, and we needed to battle the Friday night traffic out of Avignon (which was absolutely crazy, let me tell you).

We made our way back to an E.Leclerc (like a Costco) about 10 minutes from home and bought some supplies, then headed back towards home.

I dropped MBW back at the apartment, and I went off in search of our carpark to put Claude away for the night, then walked back home.

Dinner, another episode of Reacher, and we were done.

We had both walked well in excess of 20,000 steps for the day and it was taking its toll.

Maybe tomorrow – Saturday – will be more of a rest day. We only have a walking tour planned for the morning.

You have to live in hope …

Ciao

#Europe2025

Have you ever heard the saying that you have “something hanging over you head”?

Mickael’s apartment in Lyon is like that. The bathroom specifically. A dirty big hot water system hanging from the ceiling over the toilet.

And it bubbles, and gurgles, and makes other noises.

It really creeped me out, and it makes it very difficult to concentrate. Or relax.

So we stayed at Mickael’s last night for the second and final night in Lyon.

I have a view that some AirBNB hosts go to a great deal of effort and trouble to ensure that their apartment is in tip top condition, with everything new, clean, and coordinated.

And some don’t. Some seem to use their AirBNB as an opportunity to offload all of their second-hand, broken stuff and get new stuff for themselves.

Ingrid’s place in Annecy was one of the former. Beautiful, clean, new, everything working and our expectations were exceeded.

Mickael’s was the latter. Missing plates, a dirty kettle, scratchy towels.

C’est la vie.

I may have mentioned previously that it is quite hard to get fresh milk here in France. They sell UHT milk by the cow-load, but not fresh.

On our first night in Lyon we found a little supermarket just down the street, and they had fresh milk. Fresh, cold milk.

This morning we threw it out. While it was still in date by a few days, it tasted funny and made the bad coffee at Mickael’s taste even worst.

While it may not be scientifically proven, I have a theory that milk that tastes funny will inevitably lead to tummy problems, and tummy problems is something we don’t want.

Particularly if that means I have to spend time sitting on a toilet under a hot water system.

Nope. Not happening. I’d rather drink black coffee.

And so it was that our breakfast options this morning were limited.

And when I say “limited”, I mean “virtually non-existent”.

Bad coffee, and 2 day old baguettes that weren’t fresh any longer.

So we headed out, relatively unfortified.

We got all of our stuff down to B2 in one trip, and found Claude where we’d left him. B2 is a very dark and dank carport. Really quite unpleasant.

All of the rat baits down there did little to comfort me, either.

But there was a locked door in the basement that had me intrigued. It had a sign on it that read “Lingerie”. Hmmm

We got Claude out of his space and loaded up. All of his horses were straining to get going, so we tackled the ramp. Another unpleasant experience.

Claude has all manner of alarms and warnings to advise the driver of all kinds of impending disasters, and I have to say that Claude’s alarm system was going into meltdown coming up that ramp. Binging, bonging, flashing lights.

Argh! Give me a break.

But we made it out to the street unscratched and unscathed, with just a few minor mental health issues that may require therapy.

Getting out of Lyon was pretty much the mirror image of getting into Lyon including – but not limited to – wrong turns, unexpected (and unwanted) trips on the wrong motorway, crazy drivers, and a few near misses.

We battled the morning commuter traffic, found a petrol station and gave Claude a big drink. Once his tank was full, the dash said we had 680km until empty.

Remember that number.

Remember when we were coming into Lyon I commented that it seemed to be a major hub for distribution centres? Distribution centres means trucks, and there were just so many trucks on the road this morning that it wasn’t funny.

French drivers are a bit of a contradiction. On one hand they are the most obedient drivers I have ever seen – on the motorway the swing out to the far left lane (fast lane) to overtake slower traffic, then immediately swing all the way back to the far right lane (slowest lane) to stay out of the traffic flow.

But then they play chicken with you. We were heading out of Lyon this morning (admittedly on the wrong motorway, so it wasn’t a brilliant start anyway) and this driver in a work van was in the far left (fast) lane but wanted to exit, and he wanted to exit NOW.

Blinker on, and – before I’d realised what was happening – he squeezed between the front of Claude and the back of the car in front with perhaps 1 metre space at either end, and cut across 3 lanes to the exit.

Nearly scared the cr*p out of me. Claude and his early warning system wasn’t impressed either.

Then a bit later, I was puddling along happily in the slow lane (where “slow” means about 120km/h) and a B-Double wanted to move across, so it was blinker on and too bad for anyone in the way.

Take your own evasive action!

Anyway, as I said yesterday, today was a toll road day because we wanted to get to Nîmes and solve the dirty underwear crisis.

We told Joséphine that we wanted to stop somewhere around Valance, and we were looking for a nice boulangerie to get some breakfast.

We set Claude’s nose in the right direction and let his horses run free. 130km/h south towards Nimes.

It was about a 2 hour run down the motorway before we stopped at the Boulangerie Pâtisserie PONTET in Saint-Georges-les-Bains, and what a delightful little boulangerie it was. Such a wonderful display of delicious goodies, that it was hard to choose.

I have to say that the French really are my favourite people … except when they are behind the wheel of a car 🙁

Two coffees and two almond croissants, sitting outside of the little shop in the cold. But the food and the coffee was just so good.

We needed to find a comfort stop, and we were told that there were some public toilets in the next township, so off we went.

They were a bit hard to find … the signage is a bit different to what we are used to, and they are called “WC Publics” … but we found them.

Unfortunately the main toilet door was locked and the only facilities open were the urinals, so only one of us got any comfort from that comfort stop.

We were making good time, so we decided to take the “no tolls” option for a while and see some more of the countryside. And hopefully find another toilet.

We found ourselves in a pretty little township called Le Pouzin where we stopped to have a look around, take some photos, and post some postcards. If you never get a postcard from us, then that means that we didn’t send you one. In fact, you have to be 3 years old or younger to get a postcard from us 🙂

And it seems that one of the postcards that we posted from Bergen (Norway) turned up yesterday.

When you drive on the toll roads, you are sitting on 130km/h yet some vehicles go past you like you are standing still. Because you are going so fast and trying to stay as much as possible in the far right-hand (slow) land, and trying to stay alive, you don’t see much.

And – to be honest – there’s not much to see. It appears that the people from medieval times didn’t build their castles along the toll roads – they built them on the scenic routes.

We love driving the scenic routes, but they do become a bit tiring after a while because you are constantly speeding up and slowing down. Going through roundabouts. Taking what feels like back roads and shortcuts, probably because that’s exactly what they are.

Trying to get your speed right by reading the non-esistent speed signs, but relying on minor clues and local knowledge.

And having someone right on your clacker flashing their lights at you is often a good indication that you are not going at the accepted speed limit.

Coming out of Le Pouzin I had this campervan thing right on my back bumper flashing his lights at me. I mean, I could see the whites of his eyes, and I wasn’t getting a “welcome to France” vibe.

I sped up a little, acknowledging that I might have missed one of those random signs that seems to indicate that the last imaginary speed limit had been lifted, but clearly I wasn’t trying hard enough.

In France, someone sitting on your back bumper – even at 130km/h – is a pretty clear message: “get out of my way”. But when you are on a single lane road (ie single, narrow lane each way) with nowhere else to go, and nowhere to pull over and let them pass, you are a bit limited for options.

Mr Campervan put on his left blinker to overtake me and just went for it. I was surprised that our mirrors didn’t touch as he went past, and I was even more surprised that he didn’t take a layer of paint of my front bumper as he suddenly cut back in.

He certainly showed me what he thought.

I wanted to shake my fist at him and shout something in French, but the only French I can confidently say is “Je ne parle pas français” (I don’t speak any French), and I didn’t expect that would be helpful in this situation.

I could have shouted something in english – “Your mother wears army boots” – but if he didn’t parlez vouz français then the point would have been lost on him.

And by the time I’d processed those options, he had disappeared like a fart in a fan factory.

We drove through some more amazing medieval villages and even saw a medieval castle on a hill which we went to investigate, only to find it was closed.

When I say “closed”, I mean that it was surrounded by temporary fencing as a means of discouraging you from going near it. And the other thing that discouraged me from getting too close was the large supporting timbers that stopped the walls from falling over.

But I guess you have to expect that after 1000 years or so.

When we were back on the scenic route again after unsuccessfully investigating the castle, I was puddling along happily and I realised that I had 3 motorcycles sitting close behind me.

Not just any motorcycles, but ones where all of the riders are dressed alike and their bikes are fitted with blue lights and sirens.

Gendarmerie.

Their lights weren’t flashing, and I wasn’t speeding (at least, I didn’t think I was speeding). But we are in a car with red number plates that seem to scream “foreigner”.

But they all pulled out and roared away.

By this time it was close to 1.00pm and we were getting tired and hungry. We checked the “tolls” option again and found that we could cut about 45 minutes off our trip and get into Nimes by about 2.10am. So that’s the option we selected.

Back onto the motorway, we were confronted with some roadworks. It appears that councils all over the world use the same approach to roadworks – they put out orange traffic cones for 20km or so and slow down the traffic, yet there is never anyone working anywhere to be seen.

I mentioned earlier that when a French drivers is sitting on your tail it means “get out of my way”.

We were on the motorway puddling along at 130km/h and there was some slow traffic ahead. I checked that there were no vehicles in sight behind me who wanted to break the sound barrier, and so I pulled into the fast lane to leisurely overtake the slower vehicles.

It turned out that there was someone behind me who wanted to break the sound barrier – a white van with blue and white checkered pattern down the sides and blue (not flashing) lights on top.

How could this happen twice in one day?

He was obviously in a hurry, but wasn’t under lights and siren, so … what do you do? Break the speed limit to get out of his way, or stay in the way.

I decided to poke the less dangerous bear, and I sped up a little, and moved over quickly, to have … an ambulance go roaring past.

We got into Nîmes around 2.00pm and made our way to our accommodation. We are staying at Kate’s garden apartment tonight for 3 nights, so that will be nice. No washing machine here so we can’t easily resolve the underwear crisis, although there are reports of a laundromat around the corner.

The street’s around Kate’s place are incredibly narrow, with cars parked along either side at various places. We missed the apartment on the first go-around because we couldn’t see anywhere to park nearby, so we did another loop.

Did I mention how narrow some of the streets are? Some are so narrow, with cars parked so badly, that you have to do a 3 point turn just to turn a corner into the next street.

I dropped MBW off and she went in search of the apartment while I did loops.

Have you wondered what happens when a repairman needs to do some work in a steet but can’t park? He just simply double-parks, puts on his hazard lights, and puts out some traffic cones indicating that the street is closed.

It plays havoc with poor Joséphine, who insisted that I go down a road that was closed, and then had a bit of a breakdown when I didn’t.

But all’s well that ends well, and MBW got into the apartment, I “did a repairman” and parked on the footpath with my hazard lights on and unloaded Claude.

All unloaded, we took Claude to the provided undercover parking station about 4 minutes walk away.

Once we had done all of that, we found a laundromat nearby and got our important stuff washed and dried for the grand sum of 9 Euros, then went in search of a supermarket nearby to get some stuff for dinner. And some more milk.

It will be an early night tonight, me thinks. MBW is making apricot chicken and rice, and then after dinner we might watch the next installment of Reacher, Maybe even 2 installments.

Tomorrow we are off exploring some things nearby, like Avignon. We will also go and find an E.Leclerc and do a decent shop for some breakfast cereal, yoghurt, chocolate. All the important stuff.

Do you recall earlier on I mentioned that we filled Claude’s tank and that the computer said we have 680km until empty.

Because most of the trip today was on the motorway and a constant speed, Claude returned a trip performance of a little over 4.0 litres/100km. So by the time we got to Nimes – about 260km away – Claude had done some recalculations, and we now had something over 700km range on the fuel tank.

More than what we started with.

Go figure.

On a happy note, I am extremely pleased to advise that Kate’s apartment does NOT have a HWS hanging above the toilet.

That means that I will be able to comfortably … nope, doesn’t matter.

Ciao

#Europe2025

It was a bit of a rollercoaster today. The day started on a high, and ended with a feeling of disaapointent.

Or maybe I’m being overly dramatic.

We stayed at Ingrid’s place last night. It’s always nice when you get to meet the host. It’s especially nice when they speak English.

The one useful bit of French that I have mastered is “Je suis Australien. Parlez vous Anglais?” And it comes in very handy, except for when the person you are asking shakes their head “no”.

Fortunately Ingrid had a pretty good grasp of English. Even more fortunately, the AirBNB app on my phone does a fine job of translating the French to something I can understand.

So we stayed at Ingrid’s last night. It was a really comfortable, cosy little apartment that was newly renovated and very comfortable. And cosy.

And it had a coffee machine.

Yesterday afternoon we did a drive around Lake Annecy, and that was very pretty. Then we went in search of a supermarket and found an Aldi that was hard to get to, and even harder to get home from.

The streets are narrow. Sometimes they are so narrow that there is a set of traffic lights to allow traffic in one direction to go, and then the other direction has a turn.

And the French drivers are impatient, arrogant, and pushy. They love honking their horn at you and will often just drive straight at you, forcing you to take evasive action.

The trip home from the local Aldi in the rain last night was really not a pleasant experience. But then something magical happens today in Annecy …

Ingrid said that there was no rush to move out because nobody was coming in tonight. So we had a nice chat with 2 of the grandies, we had breakfast, we finished packing our bags, and then we headed out to the markets in the centre of the city – about 15 minutes drive away.

You may recall that Yesterday Geoff had a problem with not having a Crit’Air sticker to drive into certain areas of certain cities here in France due to excessive emissions.

Did I mention that it is mandatory? And that the way we organised to get Claude meant that we could never have got one anyway? And if you get caught without one, you get a fine up to 160 Euro? That’s something close to $300!

But I emailed the people who organised Claude for us last night, and there was an email response waiting for me this morning, which essentially said “don’t worry about it. You won’t get fined, and if you do, we will reimburse you.”

So with no concerns about driving into the city (and the low emission zone), and happy to get there faster than on public transport, we hopped into Claude and drove down to the old part of Annecy.

And what a spectacular little city it is. Clean, beautiful, ancient (in a medieval kind of way) with the markets in progress this morning.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

We parked in the public carpark, bought a parking ticket for about 90 minutes, and went off for a wander around the city.

The central part of the city is very old, with some beautiful buildings and winding narrow streets. There is also a canal running through the centre of the city, and you can just picture this being used in medieval days for drinking, and washing, and disposing of dead bodies in a hygenic way.

The water is so incredibly crystal clear, it is amazing.

The buildings and the streets are a sensory overload. I probably took 100 photos, but they don’t do it justice.

We wandered through the markets which sell everything from cured meats, cheeses, sweets (like nougat and fudge), plus clothes and paintings.

The first few food vendors that we encountered were happy to allow us to try their product, and they were also (fortunately) fluent in English.

We tried different types of salami, and some amazing french cheeses, plus some of the nougat and also some hummus (not a fan, sorry). We bought some tomatos and some salami and some cheese … so all we need is a fresh baguette and we will be in business for lunch.

We bought some souvenirs and then wandered over to the “Pont des Amours” (bridge of love) and took our photo. Legend has it that if you kiss on the Pont des Amours then your love is sealed forever.

Or maybe MBW made that up just to get a kiss? She only has to ask …

We took some more photos of the lake, then went and found Claude and headed back to Ingrid’s place to have a final coffee and load up our bags ready to go.

Let’s digress for a minute and talk about phobias. I’m happy to admit that I’m not crazy about heights, and I have a pretty bad fear of being trapped in a small space, but I’ve discovered a new phobia that I didn’t even know I had.

Units and apartments here in France are often very small, so they need to be creative with where things are installed. In Ingrid’s apartment, the hot water system is installed above the toilet. Directly above your head.

And I’m talking a water tank that probably holds 150 litres of very hot water, sitting on a couple of brackets. Above your head.

So now (thanks Ingrid) I confess to having a fear of having a HWS fall on my head while I am sitting on the toilet.

Today we were travelling from Annecy to Lyon. Not a great distance – about 1h30 minutes if we pay tolls (and travel 180km in a big wide loop), or 2h30 minutes if we take the back roads (and travel about 120km through scenic little towns).

Because we weren’t in a hurry, we opted for the longer (time) but shorter (distance) route. With no tolls.

We told Joséphine where we wanted to go, and pointed Claude in the right direction.

Remember how I said that the traffic last night getting to and from Aldi was bad? Well, just up the road from home in a slightly different direction is a E.Leclerc. And we do love E.Leclerc. But we didn’t know it was there yesterday 🙁

But what a pretty drive it was. Up mountains, and down spectacular roads. Rolling countryside all around us, with these little villages or townships (they call them communes) every 5-10km.

I have this picture in my head of all of the various kings and royalty having a castle and village inside a walled estate. If he wanted to communicate with the next king up the road, he’d throw open the gate and send a horseman to ride the short distance to the next castle in a walled village.

And that’s exactly what it is like. You slow down to drive through a small village with medieval buildings surrounded by a wall, then speed up for the next 5km and travel through rolling green hills until you get to the next walled village and slow down again.

There was one road down the side of a mountain that was so narrow that vechicles could only go in one direction at a time. And trucks needed to stay as far left as possible so that they didn’t wipe out on the overhanging rock.

At around 12.30 we decided that the next village we saw with a boulangerie would be our lunch stop … and a few minutes later we came into Serrières-en-Chautagne, complete with a boulangerie and a little picnic area.

Every boulangerie that I have been into is a work of art, and this one was no different. All of these beautiful pastries laid out, with baguettes stacked against the wall.

I asked the girl in the shop (using Google Translate) if I could take a photo. She said something in French that was quite obviously “so long as I’m not in the photo”. Some things are the same in any language ..

We bought a fresh (still warm) baguette and a couple of croissants to go with our salami, cheese and tomatos, and headed down to the park to eat.

It turns out that Serrières-en-Chautagne also has something that we have not seen in any other township that we have been through – a public toilet. There were no doors on the men’s room so there was sbsolutely no privacy from the outside world … but it was a public toilet, and it was free.

It’s the thought that counts.

From there, we just progressed through a random series of twists and turns, and townships with varying degrees of size and history.

And then we went through this place called Salagnon – in the middle of nowhere – that had both ancient buildings, and (it appeared) a pizza vending machine in the main street.

Mind-blowing.

Lyon is obviously a bit of a central hub for France, because on the outskirts of Lyon (… well at least we think it was Lyon …) there were distribution centres with trucks lined up as far as you could see.

And so we went from travelling through the rolling green hills, to suddenly into the outskirts of Lyon and we found ourselves on major roads with impatient drivers again … which just felt like a disappointment. We’d gone from this romantic beauty to dirty roads, traffic and impatient drivers. And traffic congestion.

And then with only about 12 minutes to go before we were due to arrive at our AirBNB for the next couple of nights, one of us made a poor decision about which exit to take off the main road, and we found ourselves unexpectedly on a toll road heading in the wrong direction.

In my defence, Joséphine’s directions were unclear, and I turned too early.

And when you make a mistake like that, no Frenchman in his right mind is going to let you swerve back into the correct lane again. You are done.

And I dont think that any of them are in their right mind, to be honest.

Like all good toll roads when you make a mistake, you get penalised by having to drive about 10km at 130km/h in the opposite direction to where you want to go, before you can find an exit.

Plus you have to pay a toll.

And then there is the 30 minute time penality added to your ETA before you can find yourself even close to where you originally wanted to be. Plus some additional traffic congestion just for fun.

Bugger.

Traffic in Lyon was appalling. Plus there is that Low Emission Zone thing and the Crit’Air sticker issue hanging over my head. I obviously did some things while I was driving (and stressed) that other people didn’t like, like blocking an intersection when the lights changed unexpectedly … which earned me plenty of horn honking.

C’est la vie.

We finally made it to our accommodation and had some challenges getting into the building to retrieve the key. Once we had the key, we had to take Claude down 2 levels of an impossibly dark and narrow basement ramp system to find our parking space.

It was so narrow I needed to fold in Claude’s mirrors so that I didn’t lose them on the way down.

And then we needed to find our impossibly small parking space, and then we needed to search around the basement to find the elevator.

Dark, damp spaces, hidden doors, and secret codes to make the elevator work. It was like something out of Get Smart. But creepier.

There is so much roadwork going on around here that the place just feels tired and dirty. There was one spot where there was so much of the road that that was under construction that the detour had you driving along a footpath.

Lyon just has a bit of a gritty feel about it.

But I have said that before, about Oslo … and then we did a walking tour and saw an entirely different side of the city. Hopefully that will happen again tomorrow.

We popped up to the local supermarket in the rain to get some supplies for dinner, then home to cook and eat chicken and mushroom stirfry.

We did battle with the coffee machine, but finally got it to produce something that loosely resembled coffee … not the best coffee I’ve even had, but not the worst either.

It’s been a long and sometimes stressful day of driving, and I’m tired. MBW has already showered and is in her PJs, so I think it’s time for me to do likewise.

We have a walking tour at 10.30am tomorrow, so that will give us time to find out our public transport options to get to the starting point … because there is no way I’m driving Claude up that carpark ramp any more times than I absolutely have to!

Ciao

#Europe2025

OK, I’m just going to come straight out and say it. I wish I’d paid more attention in Year 8 French lessons with Miss what’s-her-name.

Last night we stayed with Laurence and Guy, and we met Guy (pronunced “Ghee”). He didn’t speak a single word of English, and the only French that I can remember was completely useless.

“Quelle heure est-il?” is the only only French phrase that I can recall, and from memory it means “What time it is?”

Absolutely no use at all when what you really want to ask is “Where is the nearest McDonalds?”, or “Will you call me fat if I eat 2 baguettes for breakfast?”

Anyway, Guy was scheduled to arrive at 9.00am to check us out, but we were ready to roll by 8.30, so we messaged him and he came straight over.

By the time he’d arrived – maybe 8.40 – I had already packed all of our stuff into Claude and we were ready to go.

Remember the photo from yesterday or the really narrow ramp up onto the carpark level? Remember how I had maybe an inch or two either side of the mirrors? Guy took that ramp in his little Renault minivan like he was practicing for the French Rally championships.

Crikey!

So there was lots of shoulder shrugging, and plenty of gesticulating, plus a little help from Google Translate, we managed to convey that we were done, that we’d had a lovely time, and that we’d left the apartment spick and spiffy.

The only remaining question we had from the check-out procedures was removal of the rubbish, and when we showed him the bag we were carrying, he pointed to an unmarked door which he opened with a special key, and then proceeded to usher us down some dark, concrete steps into the dungeon … er, basement.

Do you ever lie awake at night and wonder “how am I going to die”, and then suddenly find yourself in a situation where you wonder if this is it, and it wasn’t a possibility that you’d considered previously?

Like being tied up and starved in a cold, dark dungeon in Dijon?

I had that moment this morning walking down those stairs. But it was all OK.

So the rubbish was thrown, we had said our final “merci beaucoup” and “au revoir” and we were off.

While we really want to enjoy the scenery here and the medieval castles, that means taking the “no toll” option which saves a few Euros, but can add many hours to the trip. So if we just want to be somewhere, we take the toll road and part with up to 30 Euro (I think the most expensive toll road so far), and get there in super-quick time.

Today was one of those days. We just wanted to get to Annecy and see the sights. All reports are that Annecy is very beautiful.

Today is Monday, and just like in Australia, Monday has all of the little munchkins back at school – with the associated school zones and kids everywhere.

But we made it through the traffic and got onto the A39. We set Clause’s phasers to warp speed, and in no time we were hurtling down the A39 at 130km/h.

All repoprts are that the police here are both decisive and inflexible. If you get caught doing 5km/h over the limit, you get a fine and don’t even bother arguing about it.

So Claude’s cruise control is a very handy feature. Set and forget. 130km/h and point him at Annecy.

Nothwistanding what I have heard about the ruthless policing, there are still any number of other drivers on the road who seem to treat the speed limits as a suggestion rather than as a requirement. They go blasting past you like you are standing still, and vanish into the distance.

So because we spent a bit of time on the toll roads, we didn’t see a great deal of the countryside. But we were making good time.

We stopped at some little roadside rest area for a cuppa and a biscuit. They have toilet stops on the toll roads, but you barely see any facilities on the other minor roads, which is a bit of a problem for someone with a KMart bladder.

Those snow chains that we bought for Claude on our first day in France proved their worth today. Because Annecy is in an area known for snow and ice, becauase it is up in the French Alps, it is mandatory to carry snow chains.

I carry them, but I have no idea how to fit them and no intention of using them. The warning signs were all there, but the roads were clear and dry.

When we left the rest stop, Claude and Joséphine decided that they were no longer talking, and we could not get Google Maps to load on Claude’s screen. Argh!

But I’m please to report that they resolved their differences, and within a few kilometres they were happily communicating again, which meant that MBW and I were also OK because we had Google Maps again.

No Google Maps means that there is also not a great deal of happiness in the car 🙁

The most interesting part of the journey was the tunnels. Because this area is so mountainous, the toll roads typically go straight through the mountains. That is a huge time-saver, because I can tell you that the toll free option (ie over the mountain) takes a great deal longer and uses a great deal more fuel.

And it probably also significantly increases the risk of needing to fit those snow chains!

Now I have a confession. Ever since I watched that movie “Daylight” with Sly Stalone about a tanker explosion in a tunnel, I’ve had a bit of a thing about tunnels.

I avoid them if I can. But sometimes you can’t – like when you are on a toll road to Annecy.

I have to tell you that we must have gone through 6 or 7 tunnels today, all increasingly long and dark.

In fact, I have been through so many dark and winding tunnels today that I was starting to have flashbacks to my last colonoscopy.

Which reminds me, I must have another one coming up soon.

The infrastructure is pretty amazing here. Roads link into other roads and you find yourself just zipping from one road to another … clocking up tolls as you go, but that’s another issue.

The only real problem that we had was that Joséphine was a bit slow making up her mind about giving us directions, and there were a few times where we ended up not exactly where we wanted to be.

But that’s OK – it’s all part of the fun.

We had a slight problem with our accommodation tonight. The check-in time was 5.00pm and we were got to Annecy around lunchtime. We have also been warned about leaving Claude parked anywhere with our luggage still inside it.

None of that is something that we would worry about in Australia – we travelled 10,000km with Percy (the caravan) on the back, all the way through Queensland and the NT without any issues, but we have been warned about France.

So we got some stuff for lunch – a baguette and some ham – and we set off on a drive around Lac d’Annecy (Lake Annecy), one of the largest lakes in France. It is a very pretty drive of about 40km, but is forecast to take about 2 hours … which didn’t make a great deal of sense … until we started to do the drive.

Like all other areas of France where we have been so far – except for the toll roads – your trip is puncutated with speed up to 80km/h, slow down to 50km/h (and there is a trick to figuring out when you have to do that, because it is not actually signed as such), then down to 30km/h, then back up again.

And once you hit to gear, you are slowing down again. And then there are lots and lots of roundabouts, and all of the crazy French drivers.

So we set off and found a nice, quiet place to stop for lunch about one third of the way around.

There are some very pretty little townships surrounding the lake that just feel like little alpine villages. And then you come through a genuine medieval village that must be hundreds of years old.

In fact, we were reading some information about Annecy and it seems that parts of Annecy date back to the first (FIRST!) century.

We finished the drive, and parked back in the city. We kept getting a message about entering (or leaving) a low emission zone – which we Googled – and found that there are some zones in some cities where certain vehicles are restricted from entering.

That shouldn’t be an issue for us as Claude is brand new and meets all of the environmental standards, but … a Crit’Air stick is mandatory on all vehicles, and we don’t have one.

Not an issue for Annecy because they have no restrictions in place, but they do have restrictions in Lyon (tomorrow night), Nice (next week) …

Argh!

But that is future Geoff’s problem.

We got groceries for dinner, arrived at the apartment, met Ingrid (our host) and settled in for the night. And it is a lovely apartment too.

Now I promised an interesting story about Annecy.

We had never planned to come to Annecy, but when we were in the final stages of our bookings and accomodation we did a final check to confirm that we hadn’t missed anything. And we discovered that we had missed a night between Dijon and Lyon – we had miscalculated our days.

So we looked for somewhere to stay for just one night.

And we found Annecy.

Tomorrow we will get up early and go down to the markets by bus, and then come back and pack Claude before setting off for Lyon.

Ingrid (our host) said that there is nobody in the unit tomorrow night, so we don’t need to rush off. But we will plan to be gone by lunch time to make the drive – only a short one – to Lyon to continue the adventure.

We will be in Lyon for a few nights, so that will be a nice rest.

Ciao

#Europe2025