Driving in France

There were 7 of us at breakfast this morning, 2  from Te Aroha, 2 from Wellington and a lovely girl from Auckland. We all had a gr8 old chat.

Was awesome day today. We were picked up at the hotel and driven via 2 other stops, to Orly Airport. The guy behind the counter spoke reasonable english and they had a car with a GPS for us. Hooray!

He gave us a run down on how the gps worked but unfortunately forgot to tell us anything about the car, and the manual is entirely in French. So no info about the cruise control (Kev has that sussed now) what petrol to put in, how to open the bonnet or anything else. Putting petrol in will be tomorrows little challenge!!

Anyway Kev was the star driver and we got away with no problems. Onto the A10 which is the main motorway south. The speed limit is 130km and with 3 lanes we were able to travel at around 100 and pass things in the slow lane without getting in the way of the fast lane. But as we got further south it reduced to two lanes which meant when we pulled out to pass there was always a porshe or a merc right up our arse and making rude gestures.

Kev asked the guy at Hertz if there were tolls and he very cleverly said no. Saved himself a lot of grief from us. So the first stop on the motorway was a shock. First you have to take a ticket to get through and then when you get off the motorway, as we bravely did for lunch and comfort stop, you have to pay the toll to get off. Has cost us about 20 euros today so being mean we will try a different tack tomorrow. We want to go on the smaller roads anyway so that is another challenge. At least on the motorway there is no oncoming traffic and no roundabouts.

We decided to stop just before Poitiers as we didn't want to go into a big city. Might have been better as the GPS didn't cope at all and we ended up on some very narrow windy streets with traffic two ways. Kevin did an amazing job especially having to cope with me freaking out. Stopped at the first hotel we came to which cost 39 euros for the room, which is basic but fine and 4.95 euros for breakfast.

Have been out for dinner and a much needed drink. Tomorrow we are going to La Rochelle, on the coast, Rochfort and then Bordeaux. Not sure if we will risk driving into Bordeaux.

Forgot to say when we went to Luxembourg Palace yesterday they grow fruit trees, apples and pears. They even have their own bee hives. Funniest thing was the fruit on the trees were individually wrapped in white paper. Will put up a photo soon if you don't beleive me. Thought it must be for bird protection but some of the trees were completely enclosed in bird proof netting???