First day in France

The ferry was quite comfortable, not a whole lot smaller than an InterIslander, but only a 90 minute journey. Interesting that, eh! It takes twice the amount of time to get from the South Island to the North Island of NZ as it does to get from England to France.

We picked up our brand new (4km on the clock), Peugot with no problems. Graham had already spoken to the agent by phone twice and found her English was pretty good. The GPS did a wonderful job of getting us to Paris, except for one exit from a motorway that took us down a narrow street with lots of buses parked up in front of big signs that said "ferme". Still, after a few narrow streets and hair-raising intersections where cars from 5 different positions ended up converging on the same one way narrow street, we found ourselves in a small dead-end street. Graham said this can't be right,





but Ann had been watching the street signs and instructions and said, yes it is. We found number 4,





and amazingly when we rang the bell Bridget answered and took us up 4 flights of stairs to the apartment.





That's ours with the herb plants on the windowsill.

We unloaded our stuff and then drove around the Bastille and down even narrower streets to the garage Graham had prebooked. We left our brand new leased car in this dodgy looking garage without any proof we had done so! Graham tried to converse with the guy in English. He just shrugged and said "parlez vous Francais?". Ann had to try out her school girl French from 35 years ago and managed to find out that the garage was open "tout les temps" so it was no problem to pick the car up early on Thursday. We were very glad to get back to the apartment and have a glass or two of duty-free French wine!

;-) Ann-a-Gram