The first drive into France......

Today we were up and ready to go by...10:15a.m. pretty good for us. We jumped in our little pumpkin (VW Golf), our beautiful (coach)  BMW wagon 7 series with serious power was only given to us because they had no more economy cars available for 4 days.....hummm not sure we should have had it because now all we do is compare the pumpkin to it...anyway it is small and great for the tiny parking spaces. 

Gertie was all ready to go with addresses thanks to Annie staying up until the wee hours on a "school" night helping me plan this trip.  Gertie took us to our hotel IBUS in Chateau Thierry, France in 5 hours.  Along the way we were blown away with the beauty of rolling green hills, trees and vineyards along the very nice roads.  Wow, such a beautiful scenic drive.

.. Note:  it is wise to know before embarking on a long trip in a foreign country what the symbol for "rest stop" is......it was a long time and I was panicking.....we finally saw a bunch of trucks and figured, rest stop.....it was a rest stop for truckers which I had to use and trust me this was nothing like any stop I've ever been in...."honey buckets" that looked like igloos.....avoid at ALL cost!  

Clear, cold day and so when we got out of the car to fill it up with gas the first time we were shocked at how cold it was on such a sunny day.  During the last 1/2 hour of the trip we started to notice that the car was pinging and Gary said we better get some super this time....what an ordeal to get gas, the first place was a truck stop but this place was in town and way different. We took a couple of shots at getting in there and looking at the machine as if it was from a different planet.....then we sat and watched from the parking lot and finally I just got out with my card and asked a girl who spoke no English, she showed me which nozzle and where to put the card but since I was so totally confused I went and got in the car and told Gary to just go up behind someone else and I will try again...this time the second girl could understand a little English and I figured out that we had put DIESEL (gazo) in the pumpkin which took unleaded.....hence the pinging.....and now this lane that we were in  made us  drive to the man in the box and pay.....much better than the other lanes where you had to validate your credit card in the machine.......BIG DEAL getting gas.  Ok so here are two people that have been in the petroleum business all our lives and this so far was our biggest obstacle...bigger than operating the GPS or figuring out wifi at the hotel.

I mention all this in case someone ever just feels like jumping on a plane and getting dropped off in Europe with a rental car....better get instructions on the gas situation cause I do know this for sure from being in the gas business...if it would have been a diesel car and gas went in....foogettaboutit your life has come to a complete hault!