Another one of those days

The day started filled with promise... We would collect our campervan and be set free!
Yeah right.

John decided we could ride over to the campervan rental place, collect the campervan, drive back to our hotel and head off.
He had carefully planned all routes, options and timings. Did they work? In a word, NO. It was a rollercoaster of a ride.

The ride started well enough. But just after the Eiffel tower it all went pear shaped, badly. We had gone a little further along the Seine thn intended. The GPS unit, in its attempts to get us back on track took us through a minefield of roundabouts, narrow streets, car horns, and wildly gesticulating french motorists. It was madness. The 45 minute trip of 18km took 2 hours, and I’m not sure how many kms. We thought our adventure for the day was over.

Then we got the van. Not the one we ordered, but an upgraded one. Seemed OK at the time. More on that story later.
After we had learnt how to operate the van, it was nearly time to hand it to us. But they couldn’t start it. So we got another van. And another run through. And removed all the stuff out of van1 into van 2.

All of this pales into comparison with what happened next. The plan was to take a short route to the ring road, follow it round, and duck down to the hotel. 30 minutes. A walk in the park. The first sign of trouble was when John took a wrong turn, the GPS unit panicked and sent us into a very narrow street. I’m sure my blood pressure will get back to normal by the end of the year. There were some very close shaves as we squeezed between parked cars and oncoming traffic, all in a street wide enough for 1.5 cars.

All this in a context where I don’t normally drive a left hand drive vehicle, and have never driven a motorhome before. Thinking that was behind them, there was another nice surprise when we turned a corner and saw the Arc d’ Triomphe. The words ‘beam me up Scotty’ were never truer. Here we were facing the crziest roundabout in the world. And I was driving on the other side of the road to what I am used to. And I hadn’t really got used to this high, wide campervan. This roundabout is crazy at the best of times, let onlone doing it in a motor home.

I felt more like Chevy Chase as Clark in the Griswalds European Vacation as I continued to drive. The roundabout at the Arc D’ Triomphe was like a huge vacuum force. It could not be escaped.


But I got through it somehow. But my level of high blood pressure was nothing compared with what the poor GPS unit was going through. For the next hour, our GPS unit didn’t know whether to send us North, South , East or West. It was brutal. I wondered if I was ever going to get out of Paris.

But we found our hotel, loaded up, and headed out of the city. This ended up being a straightforward process, although I’m not sure that driving a campervan in Paris could ever be described as straightforward. One of the highlights of our inner city intrigue was waching someone try to reverse park. Narelle said ‘surely there is not enough room’.
As they were reversing the Volvo, they hit the accelerator to give the Audi TT a solid front love tap. It jumped back about 1m. Obviously the gap as still too small, since the volvo driver just drove off.

The roads were busy as everyone was heading for holidays. But we eventually made it to highway speeds and arrived in Breux about 6pm.

But Bruex is such a beautiful village. We are glad we are hanging around tomorrow, despite the forecast being bleak.

As for sleeping, well that will be interesting, as our double bed requires a ladder to get to it.

Another day of unintended highlights. Negotiating the roundabout at the Arc D’ Triomphe would surely rate as one of the craziest things I have ever done.