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The following morning I meet, Chris an American eating breakfast. He’s had a really rough time since arriving in Paris. He fronted up to Bastille Hotel on Saturday night at 23:30 and presented his room booking to reception. They tell him that they don’t have a bed for him, that he’d cancelled his booking. Chris tells them that he’d cancelled a booking for the 31st of May not the 24th. Sorry we have no rooms available comes the reply. Chris goes looking for other hotels in the area but they are all booked. Thinks he’s going to be sleeping in the park when a helpful hotel owner does an exhaustive ring around for him. He finally finds a place that ‘may/ have a room. He gets in a taxi and pays 20 Euro to go across town to a place that may or may not have a bed for him. Luckily the owner is still up and has one bed available. Relief sweeps over Chris for the first time in an hour.
Turns out he’s who’s looking for some people to share a ride in his hire car. He wants to do a day trip to a castle, Mont-Saint-Michel. I
ask Chris how much this will cost for shared expenses. He says 15-20 Euro so I say why not. We and a Turkish journo head to the car hire place so Chris can pick up his BMW. He’s also a journo in the car hire industry and has this vehicle on the house. It takes ages for the car hire people to give us the vehicle. They say it’s being cleaned yet when we pick it up downstairs it is dirty. What do you expect for nothing. We head off in what we think is the right direction to get out of Paris. We can’t put the punch destination into the GPS so we’re flying blind.
The signage around Paris is less than helpful so we pull off at another car hire joint and ask directions. The guy behind the counter is amazingly helpful. He even does a printout from google maps of our route. Then he gets our GPS working. There are some amazing people over in this country. Now the GPS is operating we get regular helpful directions from our onboard GPS chick. TURN LEFT IN FIVE HUNDRED METERS she extols in a perfect BBC presenter’s accent.
Soon we’re zooming down the highway at 140 ks feeding Euros into toll booths every twenty-five minutes or so. We stop off at a truck stop station that looks more like an up market shopping mall. Chris wisely purchases a glossy regional road map of France. He’s heading off to wine country tomorrow and will find the map a must.
A few hours later we reach our destination, the castle of Mont-Saint-Michel. It’s easy to see as it’s the highest structure around for miles. We pass by a number of quaint little villages as the castle grows in size. Moments later we’re in the large car park looking for a spot close to the castle itself. Chris plays chicken with a bus that seems bent on destruction before we find out parking spot. We head up through the main entrance which is a cobble stoned alley with shops extracting tourist dollars on either side. Once we’ve run the gauntlet of commercialism we enter the building itself. The place is awash with plenty of tourists on a Monday. God knows what it’s like on the weekend. There’s lots of stairs to climb and plenty of photo ops along the way.
There’s a spectacular view of the surrounding countryside in a large open space outside. The castle is surrounded by sand as it’s right up against the Atlantic shoreline.
We headed off on our way back after a couple of hours. The weather had been very kind during our stay at the castle but was now turning sour again. Chris wanted to check out the Normandy beaches on the way back which was fine by me. We detoured toward the coastline and found the war memorial and graves just as the rain picked up and the temperature dropped. I would have loved to have seen the beaches featured in Saving Private Ryan but we were running out of time and weren’t 100% sure where we were in relation to the coast. On the way back we saw a bright flash of light and Chris freaked. He was sure he’d just been caught by a speed camera.
We got back on the highway and coiffed up more money for tolls. Chris stopped at a petrol station and filled up with diesel. The bill came to 85 Euro and we were still half an hour from Paris. I wouldn’t do this
again, it’s too expensive. But it was good to get out of Paris. Ozcan and I paid Chris 20 Euros each toward the fuel cost. We set the GPS to our street name and it accurately guided us back to the hotel. Chris even got himself a car a few doors down from BH. We headed off out separate ways before reuniting for dinner and drinks/ We headed up the main drag but no cafes caught Chris or Ozan’s eyes. It was 22:30 and a few places had closed. We settled on a Turkish joint on the insistence of Ozan. As it happens the owners are from his old town so he gabbed with them for a long time. The three of us ordered a combination meal that was very filling. Lots of meat and bread.
I was stuffed by the end of the meal but it was nice to sup with a couple of new found friends. We went to a small hole n the wall shop on the way back that sold cold cheap beer. I wasn’t even aware that these places existed. A lot better than buying warm beers from the supermarket. We retired to the
Bastille Hotel and drank our fill and headed off to bed. I woke a little before 07:00 and got down to breakfast at around 08:00. It was packed with kids as usual and there was a long queue to get fed. Chris was there as well as Ozan. I wasn’t in the greatest moods as I’d just discovered my mpg3 player was missing as well as my pocket radio and second camera. It was so packed down stairs that I couldn’t even sit near Chris.
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Supping with friends
It's nice to know that people are the same the world over. And although we're talking ships in the night here, it's nice to connect with other travellers rather than simply watch them pass by. But what's this about a lost MP3 player and camera? Your story ends just as it begins to get mysterious...I look forward to the next installment on tenterhooks (whatever they are).