Paris-Cluses

We can both proudly say that we have given Paris every effort to see its top sights and happily we report that we believe we have had an authentic French experience. We found the French people very lovely which we were both surprised about, having heard many tourists say the opposite about their stay. We are both super excited to go to Italy and hopefully will meet more lovely people and understand the Roman lifestyle better, especially their food!! Greasy pizzas here we come.

We didn’t have an exact route planned but as long as we end in Rome in two days we’ll be happy. We have a few options of staying in small towns in France and in Italy we’re thinking of staying in Geneva, Florence. First though we needed to get to the airport to pick up the rental car and we’re both pretty stressed about driving. We know that there is going to be a big fee because we're dropping it off in another country so we're just hoping there won't be other hidden fees along the way because we still have hotels to pay for along the way and our tax return hasn't come into our account. We were very pleased to drop the car off last time because it was really difficult driving. We’ll call Omaha Beach day a driving practice run. We asked for a smaller car this time because we had a couple of close encounters with curbs and buildings in narrow alleys on our Omaha Beach drive but sadly a small car on a fast no-speed-limit highway was a really bad idea. We drove through many tunnels and over beautiful gorges and past small provinces which was nice, but to be honest, the stress of driving on the other side of the road really wasn’t worth it.

 

 

This car was terrible and had NO pick up. We should have taken it back but thought it would be fine. Oh well. We both have led feet when it comes to highway driving, not that we speed, but, when there’s an opportunity to go as fast as you want i.e. no speed limit at all, we expect to be able to do just that and it simply was not satisfying to be limited to a really shit car!! So here we were plodding away in the ‘slow lane’ behind the caravans and trucks a lot of the time unless the road was downhill. What was most challenging was knowing that when we did overtake we were actually slowing down all of the traffic who had been sitting on 120-180km/hr as their average speed and we were stuck on 110km/hr max! Plus the frustration of the signs, or Ev having difficulty following the signs in unfamiliar towns. We had a couple of heated moments in the car today and found a hotel at the last minute.

No that’s not us, but we wish that it was the crappy car we were in.

 

We’ve found a new appreciation for pre-booking hotels because we would have had the security of a bed and actual directions. Anyway, driving today was disastrous so we’ve rested in Cluses at the Best Western after not finding any B&B's on the outskirts of Geneva. 

"Please no more driving EVER!!"

Where are those drinks now!!

P.S. After Dan had too many drinks he wanted more coke so Ev let him drive for the first time in France. What? Yeah, He was very uncoordinated. It was only in a back street, no cars around and he just reversed then his conscious kicked in! Come on, you actually think Ev would let that happen. He didn't actually make it all the way to the end of the street, just part way.

We had a good night and stayed up until 3am after discovering some cool French musicians on their video hits channel. We were listening to their songs on the internet and just unwinding.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dan-ev/collections/72157624677997272