John and I have met up in Paris. A longish $200 cab ride to the car, a quick fix to the roof rack that the shippers tried to rip off the car in Baltimore, load the bags and we’re off.
Well kind of “off”. Out the gate, up the road, stop and repack. Now we’re really going. Promptly get lost and start heading west out of town when we should be heading east towards Paris. Attempt #2: start heading east but end up heading west again. Get out the GPS. The GPS is lost. It thinks it’s in North America. After a good fight, the GPS gives in and lets me convince it that we are in France. However, GPS sneakily lowers the display scale so low that there aren’t any visible roads. Lots of button pushing, even more guessing, threats to leave it by the roadside and the GPS finally shows roads. We headed north but finally get turned to the east. Eventually we find our road, the A12, head toward Paris.
A few more missed turns and we are finally, and I mean finally, headed southeast on the A6 toward Dijon. Nice rolling country side. Could be Iowa. It appears that all of the farmers in France have harvested their fields this weekend. And since this is the beginning of August, the official holiday month, everyone in central France is headed south east with us.
It’s been a really long day and both of us are pretty well shot. We reach Besancon close to the Swiss border and pull into an Ibis Budget hotel. When they say budget they aren’t fooling around. It’s the Formula1 competitor but they proudly boast that their rooms have toilets in the rooms not shareables in the hall. You really have to see one to believe it. But it’s clean and there’s a restaurant right down the road. Steak and frites and beer.
Then bck to the hotel. Check email and off to bed. A sorter day tomorrow: To Lusanne to Chamonix and Mont Blanc, through the tunnel into Italy and on to Livigno a few miles from Bormio, the start of the Dtelvio.
Gotta stop for the night.
Obi-wan
Have a good sleep. Rosie in Dallas, en route to Madrid later today!
Hey, that is my beloved GPS. Treat it with respect, please!
me
I think they actually sell maps of europe and asia that you can load onto the GPS. Otherwise they’re really xenophobic.
We have a set of european maps on a microSD card that we pop in to the side of the GPS. Sometimes it even works. We always threaten to buy one here but never do. We always seem to get this one working well enough. Later in the trip all bets are off.
P
Bravo! I once spent a morning and part of an afternoon on that dang loop road around Paris.
“Undaunted, they soldier on.”