A Little Tour de France

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How often do you see a travel article about someone's family reunion? Well, this is unusual for me as well since this little tour in France was for a big family reunion. But fear not, I will spare you the details on the reunion and just recount the road trip. The actors on this trip are my brother, my niece, and one of my cousins, let's call him cousin T (no resemblance to Mr T though, not even the hair style).

Paris

The trip starts and ends in this capital city of France, my once home town. I am not good at talking about the places I live in, so I'll let you read the many travel guidebooks for points of interest, what to do and where to stay in Paris. The pictures might also give you an idea or two.

As a note, all night pictures of Paris were taken in one single night, which in my mind is a little feat in itself considering how far apart the places are and the relative narrow time window of good light. It was possible thanks to my brother who served as chauffeur that night and the fact that I knew where exactly to set the camera for each picture.

The disadvantage of knowing well a city is you miss some interesting views of someone who first discovers the city.

The Car

My brother's car, a beaten up 40-horse power Citroën AX, is the car for this road trip. This car had served us well on a road trip from Paris to London more than 10 years ago. But it was newer then and that trip was another story.

With four of us and our luggage, even though they are reduced to a minimum due to trunk space, we probably approached the weight limit for the car. On the autoroute, the steering wheel starts to shake uncontrollably when the car gets near 130 km/h and the engine starts to make louder noise that one can't help but wonder if it would explode (I am exaggerating just a bit for the story telling). For the whole trip, I never tried to push the car beyond 130-135 km/h fearing that it would not make it to destination. My brother, on the other hand, had no qualm pushing it to 140+ km/h. For one, this is his car after all, and maybe, just maybe, he secretly wanted to get a new car sooner.

On the way to Nîmes, I noticed that people in the cars passing us on the autoroute all looked at our car with that what-the-heck expression in their eyes. I also noticed some strange noise time to time, but could not determine whether it was from the engine giving up or something else. Once in Nîmes, I examined the car and found that the bumper was hanging loose on the back left corner of the car, causing the noise when the car hits a certain speed or when a wind gust hits it just right. My brother broke it a while back and never cared to have it fixed. So another cousin of ours bought some duct tapes and I taped the bumper back to the car (one of my better duct tape job, I must say). With the grand repair, the noise was gone and I believe the car gained a couple of kilometres per hour in top speed.

The car, of course, does not have AC and the south of France is, well, hot in August. So once we got to Nîmes and for the whole week of the reunion, cousin T took every possible opportunity to ditch us and go with the other cars that have AC.

One day, we were in the Cévènnes and came to a small village when we were informed that the road we intended to take was closed for rally racing. Since our alternate road required crossing the village, they let us through. At the village, we were stopped to let by some of the rally cars. Of course, they were making their usual wroom wroom noise. So I rolled down the window, my hands on the steering wheels and with a straight face I asked one of the volunteers (who stopped us) whether he thought I could enter the car for the race (it's the shortest road to our destination after all). He was taken a bit aback, looked at the car and the five of us inside (Mom was with us that day), realized the joke and with a big smile said "You could try".

GPS

Anyone who has used a GPS probably has stories to tell. Here is our share.

For this trip, my bother bought a GPS. We tested it in Paris where we know well the streets to make sure it works and that we understand its directional instructions. For example, at a roundabout, one can either say take the third street or take the second exit if one of the streets is a one way street coming to the roundabout only. My brother's GPS uses the latter instruction.

The GPS can speak several languages, but we could only understand Spanish, English and French. Spanish was quickly ruled out since we don't understand Spanish as well and my niece didn't like the voice of the guy. So for the trip, we used French and mostly English so that our cousin can understand and our niece can practice her English.

Arriving to Nîmes, not too far from our destination, the GPS told us to take the first exit at the imminently upcoming roundabout. We went further than what the GPS said and still didn't see the roundabout, then suddenly the GPS told us to turn around to go back to the roundabout. We turned around and still couldn't find it. Then we realized that the said roundabout had been turned into a normal intersection!

GPS users know that the positioning is only accurate to a certain degree. For instance, one might be driving on the road but the GPS shows the car on the railroad parallel to it! But the most funny thing (well, only funny in hindsight) with inaccuracy on this trip happened to one of my cousins: the GPS told her to turn right immediately, which she did and almost rammed into a wall because that's where it told her to turn to.

My brother's GPS knows about speed limits on the roads and can make an alarm sound when the car goes faster than the speed limit. One day, just for fun, we decided to have that speed limit alarm on and play around with different sounds. At one point, we had it set on a police siren sound. We were in the middle of the day in the south of France, needless to say that it got hot in the car and cousin T, the one who tried to ditch us at every possible opportunity for a car with AC, had a hard time staying awake. Suddenly, a loud police siren sound came off, cousin T woke up jumping with that dazed look of "what the heck is going on". We just went beyond the speed limit.

Back to Paris, we decided to visit the Château de Chambord which is about two hours south of Paris. My brother entered Chambord into his GPS and off we went. After driving west for about an hour, I asked my brother whether we were heading to the right direction since it is supposed to be south. He assured me we were, "I have it in the GPS" he said. After about two hours, we got close to Chambord but could still not see any sign for the château. My brother looked up points of interest on his GPS and the closest castle is 30 km from Chambord. We then realized that my brother entered Chambord, the town (actually more like a village), in his GPS and not the château which is about an hour and a half away, still.

The South of France

All those years I lived in France, I have never been to the South; this was my first time. I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it. The food is good, the wine is good, the weather is good, brief, life is good and definitely is at a slower pace, which allows one to appreciate life even more.

Our base camp was Nîmes; that was where our family reunion took place. So the South that I experienced is limited mainly to the regions around Nîmes. There are beautiful old rustic villages in the Cévennes, but it is difficult to find a safe place to stop and take pictures as the mountain roads are narrow. Most of the monuments are from the Roman era and they show the advanced engineering of the Roman. But again, you are better off reading guidebooks for places to visit.

The Alps

We only visited Grenoble, Annecy and Chamonix in the Alps, with a little detour to Geneva, but that is not part of France. Chamonix is the birth place of extreme skiing, so it was good for me to visit the place. The landscape is quite stunning and I would definitely like to try my skiing skills on the terrains there. However, I found the town crowded and too touristy. The town is inundated with alpinists and outdoor enthusiasts from all over the world. To me, Chamonix seems to be victim of its own success.

Younger, I have been to Annecy several times with my parents. I can not say I remember much of the town except that I have been there. This time, I found Annecy very beautiful, charming and pleasant to visit. We went to local charcuteries and boulangeries to get different kind of saucissons, jambons fumés, cheese and breads then had a picnic at the border of the lake, soaking in the scenery and the sun. Life is good indeed.

Last updated: 2009-08-14 23:40:31 -0700