France!

---

This is a little late, but better late then never!

So back in February we went to France for a week long trip. We decided to start in Paris, get there by bus and then from Paris rent a car and go to Mont St Michel and then Normandy.

We booked last minute and getting to Paris was quite expensive so we thought it was a great idea to take the bus there. And it wasn't so bad at first as this is what I wrote down in a journal to use in the blog:
"We are on the bus and just leaving London and taking the bus is already worth it. We got a tour of London centre and some country side as the bus drove out of the city. It is very hilly, lots of dips and valleys along the highway.
The landscape looks simular to home as you drive north to cottage country. Places always seem to look like home or do we always compare thing to home when we are away from it? Though, a wise girl once said, 'There's no place like home,' so I stopped looking for it and enjoyed the ride.
There are lots of little cottages with thatched roofs and smoke billowing from the chimney."

When we got to the ocean we took the EuroTunnel Frieght Service. The bus drives onto a big train cart and then it goes speeding under the ocean to the French side.
Journal:
"Loading onto the train to take us under is very strange. The area is surrounded by hills like a fortress. Likely what was dug out to make the tunnel makes these hills. Which is kind of cool as we are surrounded by hills of the ocean floor.
We arrive from below the ocean into French soil. Which happens to be covered in thick fog. Our bus driver is pretty entertaining. He just gave out instructions in the worst French I've ever heard; there wasn't even intention in his voice to try using an accent."

So all in all, judging by these journal entries the bus was a great time! Well, lets time lapse to end of the trip to get it over with. I will go back to the inbetween stuff after as it was all great.

When we arrived back in Paris we were met with intense traffic. We had to find the Avis car rental site that was close to the bus station, as the attendant when we got the car told us we could do so. It was closed! And, by the way, we drive around in circles for a significant amount of time just to discover it was closed. Then we went to the next closest rental site which was also closed...because they were on lunch break. So we proceeded to the final destination and at this point we'd missed our bus...yup. They told us to leave the car in the middle of the street and they would move it shortly. That would be like leaving your car in the middle of Young Street, during morning rush hour. So you can imagine the looks we were getting.

So, knowing that we missed our bus we started coming up with alternative plans as we made our way the find out when the next bus left. We spent the next few hours laughing at the lunacy of it all. Like, you know how crazy people laugh a lot, thats what we were like. We were told that we could not purchase or transfer our tickets until an hour before the next bus was due to leave which was many hours later. So we sat and waited. I was forced to eat McDonald's. Then it came time to go purchase or transfer our tickets and we were told we couldn't, even though there were sits left. (This is when lunatic laughing was especially therapeutic.) So we hovered around the ticket window for the hour leading up to the bus's departure, with another couple, and harrassed the ticket guy until he finally relented. Then we boarded the bus and headed home with nothing but happy memories, which you can now proceed to read in the next blogs. 😊

---

Comments

[james paterson]

Hey you two
aWESOME STUFF IM GLAD YOUR SEEING SO MUCH....LUV dADDI xoxo