Today was 100% the worst day of the trip (not including the days where we were individually incredibly sick, because I can promise that on those days, we each would have been grateful if the world had opened up and swallowed us whole). Or, if you prefer, it was the best example of a series of unfortunate events that I could imagine. But I hope that in writing it down it will be like a form of therapy. Let’s start at the very beginning…

It was the evening before we were to start our road trip. We were excited but buggered, we were starting to run a bit low on money and we were not entirely sure how to get to the airport to hire our car. Nor had we organised where we were sleeping the next few nights/exactly what the destinations of our road trip would be. After a bulk planning session, we had booked the first nights accomodation and had a rough idea of the places we wanted to see. Next we started trying to figure out how to get to the airport which, as it turns out, is not the easiest/cheapest thing to do in Lyon. In our haze of information/planning/fatigue/packing we (stupidly really, looking back on it) decided that Max and myself would go on the train to the airport and Roisin would stay at the hotel to save on money and then we would come back and pick her and all of our bags up.

When we woke the next morning there was a disagreement about whether or not we should actually all go to the airport (our first real disagreement I would say, so in fairness that’s a pretty good run). You see the entire reason we had decided to hire the car from the airport was so that we did not have to fret over driving in a big city like Lyon straight off the bat. But now we would have to come back into town to get Roisin and all of our bags! But alas, it was a rather pointless disagreement as Roisin had only just woken up and had not packed anything yet (see above decision of her staying longer in the hotel to do such things). Max and I left the hotel in a bit of a confused/sleepy huff and headed off to the train station. Walking through the station we noticed that there was a Hertz rental kiosk right here ! We thought – hooray, this is the best of luck! However, they had not a single spare vehicle in their fleet, so we headed out to find the airport train. Turns out that it was a bus, not a train on this particular day, and that if we caught the bus we would then have to catch another bus to get out to the actual car rental area and that this bus was not running super regularly today. Max and I were becoming quite frustrated at this point (and hungry – we had not eaten breakfast yet), I made the executive decision to catch a taxi (so much for saving money by only two of us going to the airport). The taxi driver seemed more than a little confused as to why two young girls wanted to go to the airport without even the hint of a bag with them, but in the end he understood enough of my French to take us exactly where we needed to go, things were looking up! Or so we thought…

Hiring the car turned out to be a disaster (which was totally my fault). I could not find my credit card the night before or that morning and so I had my credit/debit card with me and hoped that would be enough. The lady behind the counter was nice enough, but when she saw my card she was less than impressed. I explained that it was credit/debit and functions as a credit card. She pulled out her list of accepted cards and started to shake her head. The clerks on either side of her both tried to tell her the card was fine, but she was having none of it. She jumped on the phone for about twenty minutes until she was finally convinced she could give us the car! Thank-goodness, because otherwise the only option was making a brand new booking with Max and as she was under 25 it would have been miles more expensive.  We sighed a big sigh of relief and headed out to our new set of wheels!! She was beautiful. A shiny, black Renault Captur. We oohed and aahed at all the buttons and I started to drive out of  the airport as Max started to put the hotel address into the navigation system. Low and behold we encountered our next hurdle. The navigation system was in Chinese. Neither Max nor I speak Chinese. The car manual was only in French. Max does not speak French and I could not pull over anywhere. How on earth were we going to find out way back to the hotel??? We turned to our last resort. Phone data. Australian phone data.

Getting back into Lyon proper (even with the GPS on my phone) was probably what you would call a nightmare. The freeway systems are a maze in comparison to anything we have back home, with roads going in every-which-way imaginable and about 7,000 exits that all pointed to  the centre of Lyon and cars merging from right and left at 130kms/hour. We tried our best to follow the GPS but it seemed to keep changing its’ mind. When we finally did take an exit, we could not figure out where to go next and ended up accidentally merging BACK onto the same freeway only moments after we had paid to exit. Then (apparently there was no other way around it) we had to get off the freeway again (paying), turn around and get straight back on the SAME freeway but back towards the exit we originally took…. I mean come ON!! At this point Max and I were about to rip our hair out (we were still hungry mind you…).

Through some sort or magic (and a little bit of trial and error), Max navigated her way through the Chinese/French GPS haze, entered the hotel location and even managed to coax her into speaking English! Woohoo! We could almost see the light at the end of the tunnel. Almost…

One could confidently assume that we would be able to figure everything else out from this point forward, however even with the GPS in a language we could both understand it was a challenge. There were so many one way streets and tunnels that we really lost any last scrap of a sense of direction we thought we had left. We ended up accidentally going into a parking garage because we didn’t realise that the road went underground but the parking garage was one ground level… you know… these types of mistakes. About forty-five minutes after we had sent Roisin a message to let her know we were only ten minutes away, we pulled up outside the hotel. Roisin seemed slightly apprehensive as she climbed into the car, not that we were angry at her, more so at the entire debacle of a morning we had just faced.

Despite our frustrating morning, we were now excited to be on the road – the sun was out, we could roll the windows down and put on some music and relax (once we made it back out of Lyon that is). We started our journey to Tavel, stopping at a service station along the way to grab some much needed snacks (everyone was a bit happier with food in their bellies).

As we rolled on into Tavel it was time for some more oohs and aahs. Situated on the brink of the Provence region, Tavel is a small village known for its wines. As soon as we turned off the freeway we were driving past vineyard after vineyard and through rolling green countryside. We parked the car at Auberge de Tavel where we had planned to have lunch (it had come recommended in a few travel blogs we had read). Alas, as we walked into the restaurant we were told they had closed for lunch (as it was almost 2.30) and that we would have little chance of finding food anywhere at this time…We were gutted. And hungry. But if only one of the early events had run more smoothly we would have made it in time for lunch!! We tried to wander around this beautiful little town,  with hanging wrought-ion shop signs, a lavoir, beautiful big doors, vine covered walls and winding cobbled streets that seemed to continue to circle around the town church rather than ever actually leading us to it… But our hearts just were not in it. We decided to make our way to the next town, stopping by the famous Pont du Gard along the way (the most famous Roman monument in the region). As we were making our way out of the town we encountered not one, but two ladders set up in the middle of the street with someone up them! Thankfully they were accompanied by a smiling person who helped guide us around the ladder in the car. I can only imagine what they were thinking “crazy tourists”…..

 

One thing we did not expect to get excited about in France was seeing the golden arches of McDonalds. But you know what? As we rounded the corner and they sprung into view our hearts soared just a little bit higher. It was open, it had food and it was delicious. We even scored ourselves HappyMeal toys which happened to be French kids books!

After our quick pit stop, we continued our journey to Pont du Gard where we expected to find the well-preserved remains of the spectacular Roman aqueduct (constructed sometime between 19 BC and 50 AD) on the banks of the river Gardon. However, as we rounded the corner to where our GPS guidance ended we found ourselves in a majestic and empty carpark. At first we thought it might be the car park for the Pont du Gard, but there was no cars around, no signage to indicate that was actually what it was and a grumpy looking chap in the booth next to the boom gate. We turned around and looked for any other signs but couldn’t find them. Instead, we found the remains of a bridge that used to cross the river and had a little look around there.

This is a picture of what we had hoped to see – an impressive 49 metres in height and 275 metres long.

Feeling deflated from our luck, it was time to drive on to our final town of the day – Uzès. Along our route to this enchanting little town, we were  continually mocked by signs pointing to the Pont du Gard (in seemingly EVERY direction imaginable) as well as countless shops/restaurants/hotels all named after the Pont du Gard…frustrating would be an understatement. Thankfully, when we arrived in Uzès it was easy to find our bearings because the town is circled by a broad boulevard that completely surrounds the historic centre. We parked the car and headed into the first pretty place we saw, which just so conveniently happened to be Place Albert where the Tourist Office was also located!  A lovely man (that we initially thought was seedily inviting Max into his random shopfront, so Roisin and I waited helpfully outside) gave us a map of the town that included all the places of interest and a suggested route to follow)!

The town itself was actually very attractive, with its large arcaded central square, numerous historic monuments, historic streets and alleys, a good mix of medieval stone houses and fine townhouses, broad tree-lined boulevards and lovely views across the countryside. We had a lovely afternoon pottering in and out of shops and art galleries as we loosely followed our map and wandered around the cobbled streets. Unfortunately, the Medieval Garden – which was highly recommended – was closed, as were the towers you could climb and the Duke’s Castle, dating from the early medieval period. We passed some lovely churches – the Cathedral of Saint Theodorit and the Church of Saint-Etienne – and an old hospital which took us about 10 minutes to actually identify which building it was. I mean the map was not the most detailed one I have ever seen, but unless some of the fountains we were supposed to find were underground, it did leave some room for the imagination.

One of the artist studios that we ventured into was that of David Jamin. It was not just his art that was interesting, but also the studio itself which seemed like it was designed to resemble a cave!

Once we had explored, we headed to Le Bec à vin where we were planning on taking Roisin for a delicious, and belated, birthday dinner. Unfortunately they didn’t open till 7.30, so we put a reservation down for a table and ventured to Place aux Herbes (the main, pretty square surrounded by attractive stone houses, arcades and with a large stone fountain in the middle) where we found a lovely restaurant called Café de l’Oustal, so we stopped in for a glass of wine. We debriefed about our awful day, but commented on how we would have an amazing dinner, check into our AirBnB and have a wonderful sleep. Dinner was amazing. Delicious. Incredible. As was the accompanying wine and decor – they even had an adorable outdoor courtyard. Everything was going so wonderfully we decided to stay for desert!

Finally it was time to drive to St-Remy-de-Provence, our base and home for the next two nights. The town looked so sweet as we drove up, lit up from the street lights. There also appeared to be some sort of festival happening. We had just put the address into the navigation system and were following the route without thinking that much about it, when suddenly we found ourselves driving up teeny, tiny, little cobbled streets that did not really appear to be designed for cars. There was no parking up any of these little streets and to be honest we were quite close to the walls of the buildings either side of the car. We made it out of the maze and did about 3 loops of the town before we found somewhere logical to park and made our way to the apartment. Granted we probably should have known that arriving so late and in the dark at a tiny town that we had never been to before may have been a silly idea, but we are idealistic, we can’t help it! We made it almost all the way, past the first door, up the flights of stairs and got the key out of the lock box before disaster struck. The key would not turn. Now it was about 11pm, we had missed a call from our AirBnB owner about 10 minutes earlier, checking if we had arrived okay. We attempted to call him back multiple times with no answer. We all tried to open the door for about ten minutes each, tried both keys on the keychain (even though one clearly did not fit properly), tried to figure out if the other two locks at the bottom and the top of the door had to be touched in any way, read the AirBnB description about a million times to see if there was any “trick” to opening this door, but alas, it would not budge. We were considering sleeping on the landing or knocking on one of the neighbours doors when I decided to have one more attempt at opening the door.

Now looking back, I probably would still have made this last ditch effort, I mean, I didn’t really think anything else could happen at this point, but that was my idealistic nature coming out again. The key broke in the lock. I was shocked, dumbfounded, horrified. I slid to the ground and sat there, not sure what to do next. Thankfully the girls were on it, as I because a bit of a disaster spiral at this point, my gut felt like it was in my boots. We had been able to access the wifi from the apartment, even though we could not get inside, so they were frantically googling any other possible accomodation for the night. As St-Remy is quite a small town, there was nothing available that also had a few 24 hour reception. Our closest option was now to drive another half-an-hour to Arles. We had no choice (other than sleeping in the car or sleeping on the landing) so I rang the owner of the AirBnB, explained in broken French/English what had occurred, and that we were going to check into a hotel for the night. The we trudged back to the car and set off again. I could not have been more exhausted, both mentally and physically. I felt awful and I was so anxious about talking to the owner tomorrow as well as concerned about how much it might cost us. If it hadn’t been for the weird start to the morning, if we could have hired a car from the train station, if we did not get lost a million times coming back into Lyon, if we had managed to have breakfast and didn’t stop at the service station, if we had made it to Tavel in time for lunch, if we had not then had to stop at McDonalds, if we had discovered the location of Pont du Gard/been there earlier and seen other people, if we had not had desert at dinner, if we had not driven around St-Remy for ages, if we had not missed the call from the owner and if the key did not break in the lock … It really was a series of unfortunate events.

Thankfully when we arrived at the Ibis hotel (now almost midnight), check-in was a breeze, the beds were comfortable and we all crashed. It is safe to say – we love Ibis, Ibis saved us. Thank you Ibis.