Lost in France

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  Paris, France
Sunday, May 9, 2004

We leave North Africa and return to France, but I still cannot place any of the towns we are passing through. A suspicion slowly raises its ugly head that we are lost. I stop at the side of the road and look carefully at my map. We are on N 105, and have just passed the A5 Autoroute, but none of the towns on the signs mean anything to me. I check my Michelin map, and out of curiosity turn the page. Oh my goodness gracious me! Now I see all the towns on the signs! We are going south instead of north! How could this have happen to me, the world's greatest navigator? After analyzing everything, I came to the conclusion that I had missed a turn on one of the multiple roundabouts in Melun, and had turned us south instead of north. I had not though to go to the next page in the map, as I was under the impressions we were going in the right direction.

We turn around, at least 30 minutes and about 50 kilometers off our route

01. Our last hotel

. Fortunately we can take the A 5 Autoroute back through Melun and join up with the A 104 Autoroute all the way to Roissy. Soon the suburbs become more elegant, and to our frustration, see a huge sign announcing a brand new Carrefour opened only a coupe of days ago in a nice looking neighbourhood.

We arrive in Roissy and I easily find our last hotel, the Comfort Inn at Tremblay-en-France. It's a very pleasant hotel and nothing at all like a Comfort Inn in the U.S. It has a nice restaurant, but we are tired, and decide to enjoy our picnic with the delectable cheese, bread and wine from Chambord in our room. Unfortunately goat cheese is not a very good traveler, and it has melted into a mushy mess. It still tastes good though. http://www.choicehotels.fr/UK/hotel/brochure.php?ref=FR131&.

Tomorrow we have to return the car quite early, and I think it might be a good idea to fill up the tank once and for all rather than trying to find a petrol station the next day. Next to the hotel is service station. This uses the "Pay at the Pump" system in the U.S., only difference is that at 10:00 pm, the attendant has gone home, and it's all automatic. I am mortified to find that none of my credit cards work there. I then search for a filling station that has a human being in control. All the petrol stations are automatic, except one which has a convenience store. I stop there and produce my card. The cashier behind a bullet proof plate glass window waves his finger at a notice in French. I finally get the gist that the credit card machine is out of order, and they will only accept cash. As usual, I am quite cashless, so I hurry back to the hotel. Once there I strip everyone of every last Euro they have to come up with a total of € 35.55. On my return, the cashier smiles and accepts the euros in bills and coins, and I proceed to fill the car. It was serendipitous that €35.55 of petrol exactly filled the tank! Back to the hotel, and to bed.

I will digress here and express my admiration for the performance of our Renault Laguna. It had run like clockwork up to now. In spite of the fact that it was a diesel, it purred like a petrol engine, and was just as sprightly. And as it if that were not enough, it was incredibly economic. Petrol costs a fortune in Europe. About US$ 5.00 a gallon. Diesel was about US$ 4.00. This car consumed a total of US$ 110.11 total,
about 30 gallons. We had driven about 850 miles from Monaco to Roissy, so we had used one and a half full tanks, a performance of 28 miles to the gallon.

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