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
The driving seems terrible. Keep calm. Sounds like a frustrating day. Better luck tomorrow