20,000km service of Cindy and north to St Etienne

---

---

It is hard to believe but we have almost bought up 20,000km driving Cindy around Europe and so today it is time for her service.With the help of Anne at CitroenDrive,Auckland we have an appointment at a local Citroen agent any time from 8am onwards.

So it was an early rise,breakfast(again indoors as it was too hot in the direct sun) and pack the car up and head into the city.We hoped that by getting there early they would be able to service the car quickly and we would be on our way to St Entienne as soon as possible as we had a reasonable distance to go to get to our accommodations for the next two nights.

We located the garage downtown without any trouble and left Cindy for her service.The mechanic thought she would be ready between 11am and midday which was a little later than we had hoped for but we would just have to hope they might phone us earlier and say she was ready.

In the meantime we headed off into the centre of AeP to do some sightseeing of places we hadn't been before,have a coffee and stroll whatever markets might be going today.

One good thing today about sightseeing so early in the day is that it was not going to be as warm as it will be after lunch when we will be motoring our way north.And,as we discovered there weren't as many tourists,just locals,at this early hour of 9am.

We decided first to wander some of the narrow lanes in the older part of the city and as we did we came across a church with an interior that did not look like it had been altered too much over the centuries given the bits of masonary and plaster that had fallen off pillars etc and not been replaced.The floor still laid in uneven slabs of stone were also a telling sign that there hadn't been a lot of recent renovation.The interior was dark with just the natural light from the sun but the stained glass window behind the altar stood out in the gloom.

A little further up the hill was the AeP Cathedral which was origianaly built in the 12th century but had had several additions to give it a mix of three styles,Romanesque,Gothic and Neo-Gothic with central columns in a Roman style which actually formed part of a smaller chapel on the sight built in the 6th century around which the cathedral was built.Respecting the no camera sign we didn't take any video of the interior although it was very impressive and like the last church had not had a lot of recent change to the interior.No matter what elese we see in a town or village we never tire of going inside church buildings which offer so much about the life and times of the place where they stand.

At the fresh market the range of what was on offer was greater than yesterday and we bought a small slice of what we hope will be a tasty cheese,olives(I am now officially converted olive eater)and tapenade to have with tonights pre dinner drinks.

After we had had enough wandering of the old city we found a café and ordered up two cappuccinos(Gretchen is now having one of these to ensure she gets her quota of coffee!)and did some people watching in the Cours Mirabeau.Mind you it took us a couple of investigations of the café menus before we found one with the cappuccinos at the price the BBA V2 was prepared to pay.

The market in the Cours Mirabeau today was mostly clothing and shoes and by the time we hade finished our drinks the tourists had arrived in greater numbers.We were tempted by some reasonable prices but decided we had enough in our suitcases to last on this adventure.

By now it was after 11am and we started to head back towards the garage hoping she would be ready to drive off by the time we got there and we weren't disappointed.The bill even came in under the quote that Anne from Citroen had got for us when she made the booking.

With nearly 250km to drive and the time approaching midday we decided to use the toll road the E80 and A7 for the first 100km or so and then take the slower but toll free and more interesting N7.

All went well as we motored along at 120kph in free flowing traffic and made very good progress not knowing how much the toll was that was mounting up.

Exit #19 just beyond Bolene was our target to exit the toll road and we drove up to the toll gates which had options for cash card(special toll card,which we did not have)and credit card(or that was what we thought the sign meant).We had had problems on our previous trip with card gates which are not manned in France and so decided to take the credit card option.Wrong move!

The machine took the ticket and €9.50 came up for the toll to pay.I inserted the MasterCard Travel Card only to find it rejected and so tried it again with the same result.There was no cancel button that would give me back the toll ticket or an option to change the payment to cash which we could have managed and the next best thing to do was to hit the help button which I did.The only problem was the announcement came over the speaker in French and kept repeating with no option to ask for what to do next in English.So here were stuck unable to pay the toll & unable to get the ticket back.After a couple of minutes and with cars arriving behind us and pulling back and taking another gate a person finally did emerge from a building 100 metres or so away carrying a little bag of money to give me change of €10 and manually operate the gate so we could pass through.Gretchen laughed all day about the incident as she was the one who last time had to manage a similar crisis as driver when all we had was a €20 note for a €2 toll and the machine didn't give change!

A quick boot lunch outside a boulangerie on the N7 and we were on our way again driving through Montelimar the home of nougat in France.The road ran parallel to the A7 but we had the time to enjoy the scenery of the Rhone River valley and the numerous small villages we passed through which was better than being on the toll road.

The D1082 carried us away from the river valley and a steady climb up to the Massif Central an area that covers 15% of France and is a mix of mountains and plateaus separated from the French Alps by the Rhone River valley.The road reached just over 1000 metres at the Col de la Republique before it descended to the isolated city of St Etienne which sits in a valley on the eastern side of the Massif.

One of the first signs we picked up as we entered the city limits was one that gave directions to the Consul for Algeria which we thought a little unusual for a city so far away from the capital Paris where you would expect other countries representatives to be.We were soon to find out why Algeria and perhaps other Arabic countries are represented here because we felt well out of place as one of the few white faces in the Auchan shopping mall which even had a full counter in the meat department for halal killed meat which is not something we have seen before in French supermarkets.

The apartment we had was in an outer suburb of the city and was part of the chain that we stayed with in AeP and although it too was a studio it wasn't as well appointed,without a balcony.

---