I have been in France for exactly 17 days and I'm leaving already!
My brilliant engineer husband is needed in the Southwest of England for a few days, so we decided to make a long weekend out of it and see some of the southern coast before he had to be at meetings on Monday and Tuesday.
Want to read about our adventure getting to London, then to the southern coast? Click on the link below.
We made arrangements to fly from Charles de Gaulle to Heathrow on Friday afternoon and we were confident in our ability to take public transportation to the airport. We left the apartment about 15 minutes later than planned but we weren't worried because we had built extra time into our schedule. We took the Metro to Montparnasse station where we would buy a train ticket to the airport and hop on RER B. The first part of that plan worked just fine - I bought two tickets for the airport. The second part of that plan failed dismally because RER B doesn't go through Montparnasse station! We wandered around like fools for about 30 minutes looking for a train that wasn't there when we FINALLY remembered that we were supposed to change Metro lines at Montparnasse, and change from the Metro to RER B at Chatelet Les Halles. We backtracked through Montparnasse, walking faster than we ever thought imaginable and got back on the Metro. The eight stops from Montparnasse to Chatelet Les Halles seemed to take forever and we were watching our watches and hoping hoping hoping that we wouldn't have a 20 minute wait for the RER B at the station. Again, we dashed through the Metro station and headed to the RER B platform as fast as we possibly could and when we arrived, out of breath, we only had to wait a few minutes before boarding the train. Yay!
We were about 1 hour behind schedule and a tad anxious that we might miss our flight. We chatted nervously on the train, and we both kept checking our watches and making reassuring noises. After that major navigation faux pas, it is a bit of an understatement to say that our confidence had waned. Inside the peripherique, the train stops at all the stations, but once outside the peripherique, it's an express train. Thank goodness for that because our nerves couldn't have handled stopping at every station! We got to Charles de Gaulle about 1 1/2 hours before departure, but this is an international flight and we still weren't sure we were going to make it.
Once again, we walked as fast as we could through the station and the terminals. Luck was on our side as there was no one in line for check-in. We checked our bag, sailed through security (except for the part where I had to completely unpack my fully-packed camera bag, and then re-pack it!) and had 20 minutes before boarding time. Time enough to grab a couple of sandwiches and drinks and snarf them down before heading to our gate.
We arrived at our gate with minutes to spare and ...unbelievable...our plane is 30 minutes late! Ergh.
We finally boarded our flight about 45 minutes later than scheduled and headed to London - a 1 hour flight with a 1 hour time difference so we sort of got there the same time we left. By now, we were getting a little edgy because we had decided to rent a car and we were that much closer to actually having to drive that car. In London. At rush hour. On the opposite side of the road and on the opposite side of the car (I wondered if the two opposites canceled each other out?). But first we had to get through passport control, which, for some reason, took about 45 minutes. We've been through Heathrow countless times and never once waited more than 5 minutes at passport control. I have no idea what the hold-up was, but we queued up and waited whilst our hopes of setting out from London while there was still some light in the sky were dashed.
Once through passport control, we collected our bag and then headed over to the rental car area. More confusion - there are 5 small kiosks for all the major brands, but our brand, Auto Europe, isn't listed? Oy. I wander over to the information desk and they clue me in that our brand is the same as Europcar/National and they tell us where to wait for the shuttle. We exited the terminal and waited for the shuttle. It turned out that waiting was a good thing because we forgot that we didn't have any British pounds, so I ran back into the terminal, found an ATM and got money before the shuttle showed up. Phew!
It seemed like an eternity before the shuttle arrived, and then it was another eternity before the shuttle deposited us at the rental car lot. I think we drove around the airport 5 times before the driver pulled in to the gate. As Ron secured the car, I pulled out our trusty GPS and got it searching for satellites. By the time we actually chose our car from the lot (a Peugeot), the satellites had been found and I set the GPS to take us to our hotel in St. Leonard's On Sea.
Easy peasy! We were confident that the GPS would tell us, turn by turn, how to get to the hotel so Ron can concentrate on driving and I can help him read signs and navigate the roundabouts. We were a little bit nervous about all this opposite stuff, but we can't sit in the parking lot forever, so off we go.
Not so fast. We had the map from the rental agency and our GPS and we still had trouble just getting out of the lot. Almost immediately we made a wrong left turn and were headed back into the rental lot. Oy. We turned around (like we were driving on the right side of the road from the left side of the car - oops!) and got headed in the right direction. Now...off we go.
Ha!
For some reason, the GPS just kept recalculating and recalculating, meanwhile we were missing all the turns and Ron is asking me to tell him where to go and I can't tell him where to go because the GPS is shouting "Recalculating! Recalculating!" and I can't look at the road signs and follow the map and figure out what the GPS is trying to say between recaculatings so we are drifting in the heavy Friday afternoon airport traffic and just trying desperately not to wreck the car. We managed to get on the main highway but almost assuredly heading in the wrong direction and we're hoping the GPS will snap out of it and start telling us, turn by turn, which way to go but it doesn't it just keeps "Recalculating!". We are totally and completely (I know that's redundant but it bears repeating) frazzled because neither one of us knows how to drive on the opposite side of the road from the opposite side of the car and we don't know where we're going because the GPS just keeps saying, "Recalculating", we don't know how to get where we're going because we delegated that task to the trusty GPS, we don't even know what direction we're headed and all we can do is keep the car in the lane and follow the car in front of us. Oy.
Not so fast. Somewhere behind us is the highway, and although I don't really know where we are, I know we are not headed to the highway. We are meandering through narrow streets with parked cars on both sides, making turn after turn after turn and running in to the curb and trees and R.O.U.S.s on the left side. Ron feels like he is narrowly avoiding approaching cars and buses and I feel like he's running us off the left side of the road. I'm even more frazzled than I was before, my body is stiff and leaning to the right, willing the car to move over just a tad and not run into obstacles on the left, and my feet are pressing so hard into the floorboard that my knees ache. Poor Ron. I can't even imagine how he's feeling because I'm too busy feeling like I'm going to die by telephone pole.
Where the heck is the highway? Why are we driving through all these neighborhoods and towns with streets so narrow two bicycles can barely pass each other let alone two cars or a car and bus!? And why oh why can't we get stuck at just one stoplight to stop the madness??? Oh thank you thank you thank you traffic gods. I got my wish. A red light! I had 30 seconds to pore over the route the GPS had us on and I discover that the path we are taking NEVER takes us back to the highway. What the hell???? Again, something in my gray matter stirs and I check another setting, and sure enough, the darn GPS is set for "shortest" route instead of "fastest". Gah! Once again, I quickly change the setting and now, hopefully, possibly, maybe, our not-so-trusty GPS will guide us to the highway. The highway with wide lanes and no turns and long stretches of just keeping the car in the far left lane (that's the slow lane!).
We had to endure another 2 or 3 minutes of South London driving before we entered the highway, and I have never been so thankful to get on a highway I've never been on before in my life. I actually un-hunched my shoulders when we were safely ensconced in the left lane of the highway. We had gone about 10 miles before I quit leaning to the right and pressing on the floorboards though. Poor Ron. Not only did he have to drive, but he also had to endure my whimpering and accusations of trying to kill me. It was a trial-by-fire introduction to driving in the UK for sure.
When we finally arrived in St. Leonard's On Sea, it was much later than we had planned, but also, thankfully, much less crowded than South London. We drove right to the hotel, found fairly close street parking and then checked in. During check-in at the lovely Royal Victoria Hotel, we were told that our room was on the 5th floor and oh by the way the elevator is broken would you like help with those bags? Oy. After that drive though, 4 flights of stairs with 2 suitcases and two laptops was a walk in the park. We dropped off our bags in our room, then walked to a local Chinese restaurant for dinner. When we finally walked back to the hotel it was midnight. We were exhausted. It had been a very long day and we were very tired and very cranky and slightly less frazzled than we were a few hours before. We were very happy to get back to the hotel and climb 4 flights of stairs so we could fall asleep to the sound of crashing surf.
Wha...you're disappointed there are no photos?? Me too actually! Stay tuned though - there are lots of photos of our stay in England.
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