A Long Travel Day

Not too much to write home about for yesterday. We spent almost all of it in the car. My Apple watch was very displeased with my lack of standing and taking enough steps.

We left Villers-sur-Mer around 10 and arrived in St. Etienne around 6. We stopped once for gas at the very beginning and once for a stretch break.

A few thoughts that I want to remember though....

We saw a school field trip at Paleospace. The kids were outside having lunch. The teacher was sitting with them smoking a cigarette.  The US is good at some things. Like not letting teachers smoke next to kids.

Gas is crazy expensive here. It cost us over 100 Euros to tank up.

The tolls on the autoroutes are no joke. I think we paid around 100 Euros in tolls. As a result (?) the roads are really nice.

Our car is called a minivan. It also claims to seat 7 people. It is tiny. There is apparently a third row but if you use it, there isn't room for anything at all in the trunk. After dinner Thursday night, as we got into our car to go to the game, two German guys knocked on Doug's window. He rolled it down and they asked if we could give them a ride to the game. The windows are tinted in the back so when Doug rolled the window down the guy saw the girls and said "Oh, I didn't realize you are four....oh but this car seats 7!" And Doug told him we had things in the trunk. I am a little astounded that someone would look at this car and think you can squeeze 7 people into it.

A "7 seater" "minivan"

But there are really no big cars here. No minivans, no SUVs, no pickups... or very, very few. In part because the gas is so expensive I think, but in part because there's quite literally nowhere to leave your giant car. The parking spaces are in general smaller than the small cars. In towns, the streets are tiny and windy. The cars park either half or entirely on the sidewalk in places. My swagger wagon would get stuck between the walls of buildings. We saw a pickup truck on the interstate yesterday and it was the first we've seen.

Also, our car speaks only German. It is a BMW and nothing I seem to do will switch the language to English. Yesterday as Elisabeth asked how much longer we'd be driving, I told her and said "but we will stop once or twice..." and the car dinged and put up a tantalizingly good looking cup of coffee with some kind of German message. We think it was coincidence and the car just reminds you to stop every so often, but I was in desperate need for that coffee!!

it was hard to photograph in the glare, but this is the tantalizingly yummy coffee.

Luckily we got to a rest stop that had good old American coffee, and all of the bar drinks we are used to, in the size cups we are used to. I got a medium sized mocha that came piled ridiculously high with whipped cream. I did not complain.

it was soooooo good.

When we got to Saint Etienne, we went to Laurent's shop. He is the official retailer for the Tour de France. It was really fascinating to see how the t-shirts and mugs and all of the other things that they sell are made. After that we came back and looked through pictures of all of our prior visits here and then went to sleep. Laurent and Claire's boys really enjoyed seeing pictures of their dad!

Today looks to be a nice and relaxing day with lunch at Laurent's parents house - where Doug stayed as an exchange student!