I've spent a lot of time in cars on the road in my life. Most vacations growing up were spent driving somewhere, most likely to our grandparents' house. So I've had both good and bad adventures on road trips in the past. I know what to expect. Most American rest stops are the same, and the fast food. So it was a little exciting to find out we'd be going down to Rennes and back in a day to move out Paul's sister Ann. She finished school down there and needed help moving out of their apartment. So exciting to find out how do the french do road trips? What are the rest stops and the food like? We had rented a big van, (UCar, kind of like UHaul), that had to be back by 6pm. So we left at 5:30am do drive the 4 hours down, then load up the van and head right back. Paul drove the whole way, here he is at the wheel...
I've only seen a couple rest stops here in France, and wasn't very impressed before. This time however, it was a nice surprise to find things clean and even kinda fancy. I would recommend the route we took, the A11 to A81. The stop we found had a nice Paul cafe in it where we got breakfast. And on the way back, we stopped at the restrooms where they get cleaned after every use.
The highlight of the day though, was when we took the first big thing out of the apartment, a bed frame. It was a lightweight Ikea bed, but they didn't want to take it apart unless we had too. You know how those things are to put together, even with instructions. So we got it out and were going down the stairs, when we discover we can't make the turn to go down to the second floor. We had opened a window on the landing that helped, but then couldn't get it passed the turn on the landing. So what do we do? Pass it down out the windows. We pushed it straight out and lowered it down to two guys leaning out of the window on the floor below us. Then we ran down to the first floor and they lowered it down to us. Totally risky and high-stress, but it worked like a charm. I got a picture of the windows we were using, but didn't get us in action. Of course, I wanted to use this method for other things, but alas, everything else fit down the stairs the boring way.
In the end, we got everything loaded in under two hours, made it back to the house with plenty of time to unload it and return the van with time to spare. Of course, we were dead tired, but Paul's grandma had dinner waiting. : )
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| we were big! check out the warnings |
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| the sunrise behind us. |
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| fancy pastries! |
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| breakfast: espresso and a croissant |
The highlight of the day though, was when we took the first big thing out of the apartment, a bed frame. It was a lightweight Ikea bed, but they didn't want to take it apart unless we had too. You know how those things are to put together, even with instructions. So we got it out and were going down the stairs, when we discover we can't make the turn to go down to the second floor. We had opened a window on the landing that helped, but then couldn't get it passed the turn on the landing. So what do we do? Pass it down out the windows. We pushed it straight out and lowered it down to two guys leaning out of the window on the floor below us. Then we ran down to the first floor and they lowered it down to us. Totally risky and high-stress, but it worked like a charm. I got a picture of the windows we were using, but didn't get us in action. Of course, I wanted to use this method for other things, but alas, everything else fit down the stairs the boring way.
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| we passed it down the middle set of windows |
Hilarious ! It must be a common method in France, using the windows instead of the stairs, because it reminds me of when we saw someone moving stuff into 9or out of ?)an upper floor apartment from the sidewalk in Paris using a rolling gangplank (there must be a name for it, but I can't think of it).
ReplyDeleteBy the way, the espresso looks like weak tea.
ReplyDeleteI heard your exciting news. Congrats. I want details.
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