Reflections on our last night in Paris

Sadly, we're leaving Paris early tomorrow morning after six days here. It's also the end of our six week vacation. (Don't think I've ever needed a complete break so desperately before. See previous posts re me and my old mum.) This holiday, torrential rain notwithstanding, has been wonderful. And I'm writing that despite all the anxiety incurred renting and driving a whopping great 'camping car' - let's call it a truck/lorry/camion - from Munich across France to the Atlantic coast and back. Not to mention the €700 bill for the damage I caused to the van by navigating Al into a hedge. (This was our fifth camping car rental, by the way. We've only managed to return our van once without damage of some sort. Hehe.)

Al and I have been to Paris five times now. This time we had no real plans of what to do for six days. I had a vague idea that I wanted to return to a fabric store - Sacrés Tissus - because I'd bought some lovely unusual  fabric there a couple of years ago. (Went. Didn't find anything.)

I'm making myself gag now. Here I am in the 'city of light' and all I want to do is buy a couple of metres of fabric. But, I'm a dressmaker and that's what I like to do. Suppose one should have sympathy for Al, who follows me around; hangs around at shop entrances in his Aussie cowboy hat pretending he's a tall Crocodile Dundee. (He looks quite cool, I think.)

To summarise a bit of our week in Paris:

It's always an immense relief when one arrives at one's Airbnb rental and discovers it is as described and more. This is our third Airbnb rental in France and second in Paris. Seems there are a few more service charges than there were when we rented in Bordeaux in 2013, but back then the company wasn't advertising on television as it is these days. (Hope they haven't got too big for their britches.)

You don't need a description of our apartment. Let's just say it's near Porte d'Orléans and on 'our' corner we have a couple of decent restaurants and the beautiful Parc Montsouris to wander through. The closest métro, at the other side of the park, is also a direct line to Charles De Gaulle airport. Should prove useful in the morning. The apartment is close to boulangeries - croissants! Tartes aux champignons! Etcetera! - markets and supermarkets. Parfait - perfect - as I've just written in a note to our host, Françoise.

Over the last six days we have walked our feet off. I don't care if I look like a tourist. My expensive  running shoes, and my regular jogging back home, ensured that despite having walked countless ks I have remained blissfully blister free. Decided against chancing Velib - the bike rental system - this time. Have already fallen off my bike once (good sight gag, I imagine) - cycling around beautiful Bodensee - Lake Constance - and nearly cycled myself under a bus last time I was in Paris.

So much for a summary. Too much information, I know, but indulge me, dear reader. I'll be teaching surly adolescents six days from now.

Last Saturday, several bridges across the river Seine were closed due to the massive gay pride march that we just happened upon. Massive crowds. Uplifting experience. Enormous police presence - and not just in the march. Our bags were searched by police carrying rifles as we crossed the Pont Neuf to see what was going on. 

Very conspicuous armed police and military presence all week in Paris, especially yesterday when there had been a demonstration - if I understood my French source correctly. Yesterday was the day that the government implemented its changes giving more power to the bosses and less to the workers, according to my source. Walking along the Seine amongst hundreds of armed police in full on sci-fi riot gear was somewhat unnerving but if there was any shit going down, I'm glad they were there.

On Sunday, we spent a long time on the métro and SNCF - the railway - going to and from Claude Monet's house and garden at Giverny. Guess what? It rained the entire time. Still. So beautiful. I read somewhere that Claude Monet said his garden, developed over 40 years if my memory serves, was his greatest achievement. It was wonderful. It really was. But, and I know I'm one, tourists. Blerk. We queued, and shook our sodden umbrellas over each other and poked each other in the eyes with them. We shuffled around those tiny paths blocking each other's views of Japanese bridges and lily pads. We tried to absorb a sense of the place; to have impressions - pun intended. Wonder what Monet would have made of us all disturbing his place. Could he ever have imagined the travesty that we tourists would make of his creation?

The hour train ride back to Paris was interesting. It was so packed that I couldn't even place my feet in such a way that I could balance. I clutched Croc Dundee by the chest hairs and tried not to cry. Really. That bad.

Still, glad we spent the money - about €100 for two of us counting a 'light lunch' - and visited Giverny.

(If you want to see extremely glorious medieval French villages and towns though, try the Alsace region - Colmar, Kaysersberg - birth place of Albert Schweitzer - Strasbourg. Actually, lots of France if our experience is any indication.)

Revisited Sacré Coeur on another day - it's close to my fabric shop!  I'd hate to be a physically impaired tourist in Paris. The climb to the cathedral is quite a challenge. Suppose you could catch a bus, or tootle around in the ubiquitous little white tourist train. Another word on sodding tourists. Yes, sod them. There are clear signs in about four languages forbidding the taking of photos inside the cathedral. Completely ignored. What is wrong with these people? 

Sacré Coeur highlights: lovely music in the lane outside. Three musicians, all harmonising, one guitarist, one beating out a rhythm, one mc-ing. So good.

Second thing? A delicious hotdog with onions and hot mustard. (A few trips to Germany and I've become quite the sausage aficionado.)

A word on Parisian hospitality, and I've probably written this before: people have been so helpful. Note well: I can speak French. In fact I speak it really well. My problem is my aural comprehension. I fool people and then I haven't got the heart to interrupt their responses to ask them to slow down. Croc Dundee, Al, understands French but can't really speak it yet he meets with neither aggression nor arrogance should he ask a stranger for assistance. I don't understand these scathing commentaries I've read here and there about people having trouble communicating with the French. In fact, all the young people seem keen to practise their English

Look, you know what, there's much more, but it's getting late and I have to get up at five. Thanks so much for reading.

Touch wood indeed. Tour de Germany part 2.

Beware your own beatific smile. Beware smugness. That's a warning to me. Minutes after I posted my last blog I drove the campervan to the waste water drain. Very pleased with the way the van handled. Why does Al make it look so hard? I thought, swinging her round the corners and expertly positioning the outlet nozzle over the drain. He just wants to have all the fun.

I'd set the sat nav for our next destination. Told Al to hop in the back and I'd drive to recepzion. Except I couldn't find my way back through the hedge maze in the camping ground. Signs didn't help. I have about three words in German. (Wein - wine, tee mit milch - tea with milk, biergarten - beer garden. Okay, that's five.) I couldn't tell which way was the ausfahrt - exit. (Okay, six.) Unfortunately, I took a wrong turn down a narrow hedged lane and felt a bit of sick coming up cos I knew I couldn't get through. Al, meanwhile was in the back putting his shoes and socks on for the drive. (He has his standards.) Realising I was in trouble, I asked him to take over the driving. 

We couldn't go forward. Had to reverse back around a corner in this tiny lane. Well, we - me out in the rain rushing side to side at the back of the van flapping my hands and calling increasingly terse instructions - got stuck on a hedge with a low thick protruding branch which got jammed under the front wheel rim.

We needed help.

Given it was my fault I felt utterly sick, stupid and pathetic. Cried. (Been there before.) What else could I do? (Hyperventilate while pacing up and down with my purple umbrella, as it happened.) My 'patheticity' galvanised Al into action. In his yellow plastic poncho he headed off to find help at recepzion.

Interestingly, he found the office quite easily whereas I had been totally disorientated. Should have let him drive.

About 45 minutes later one of the campingplatz workers arrived in his golf buggy and inspected the problem. He ripped off a few branches then wrenched, with an alarming tearing sound, the offending branch from under the wheel. 'Now is good,' he said. But it took quite a lot more to-ing and fro-ing for Al to negotiate out of the trap into which I had led him.

At least a couple of locals were entertained. A giant sized elderly gent, in white singlet, blue shorts and plastic scuffs joined in barking out instructions in German. The louder the better, he evidently thought, nodding and grinning at me. An old woman in white cardigan and the ubiquitous white pants silently bore witness from her caravan site.

Ultimately, very lucky to have got out of that one with minimal damage.

And here we are in Waldshut on the Rhine in a camping car park. Might as well be in the Coburg - Melbourne - shopping centre carpark. No way. We're having an adventure.

Muddy in Budapest.

Here I am in one of the great European cities - Budapest - and I can't get past the packed camping ground and its environs. You can't help rain, of course, so it's no one's fault that we're parked under a tree in a mud pit. But it's a bit disconcerting when you can't flush your morning's evacuations. 'It kept bobbing back up and staring at me.' Al shook his head in horrid disbelief, as did I, having had the same deal in the women's.

The women's was like some crowded steamy eastern bloc sorority house with a couple of wide eyed children staring at sad elastic confined cellulite. I wasn't about to add mine to the swill so I opted for the facilities in the van instead.

We drove for five and a half hours on B roads from Vienna - glory! - to get here. As soon as we were over the border we were on a massive criss-crossing motorway in a megalopolis - Bratislava. The traffic moved faster, lane swapping was rife and speed limits were treated with disdain. 

We came on the B roads believing we'd see more. Lots of corn fields spread around us, similar to those in Austria. However, it seemed shabbier. (Hard act for any place to follow.) Not much of interest in  the many villages we drove through. I'm sure they're all living their rich lives but there was little evidence of it. Lots of locals out on bikes gathering nuts along the highway added a bit of zest.

The long drive is due to 50, 70 and 90k speed restrictions, to which we adhered. Well, someone had to.

Our camping ground is 2k from the centre. I'm hoping to eat some humble pie after we get on the bikes and explore later today, but yesterday's brief foray around the campsite didn't bode well: dingy, mouldering blocks of flats, weeds growing through cracks in kerbs and footpaths, broken glass, litter. The local shopping mall was a tad depressing. Lots of old store mannequins staring off in bad wigs.

Yes, I know. I'm a spoilt, smug, arrogant westerner. But I'm just saying.

Klosterneuburg in the rain.

We're on day twelve of a five week tour of Europe and it's raining, hence my feeling inclined to write something about our trip.

Al has been banging on about cycling the Danube since we came to Europe in 2010 and I've been successfully persuading him to go to France instead. This year, however, I conceded. And here we are in Klosterneuburg, about 14k by bike to Vienna, along the Danube. But tomorrow, if the rain keeps up as promised by the forecast, we'll take the train.

'The rain puts a dampener on everything,' said Al, helpfully. Dampener: to dull or deaden; to depress. Perhaps for Al. Me? I'm on holiday in Europe, with the love of my life studying the camping book at the other side of the table in our luxury motorhome, once again rented from McRent in Sulzemoos near Munich. (Seamless pick up of the van, BTW.) 

What's more, I've got 150ml of Italian 'chardonnay' in a plastic beaker. Would have bought a wine glass, cos they're not provided by McRent - don't understand why not, guys - but have missed out on those Disneyland-esque French supermarchés given we're not in France, so I haven't bought one.

Seems to be a rule about what an Austrian 'supermarket' can sell. Strictly groceries, well, at Billa and Spar, the grocery stores we've found along the way. No kitchenware, even at Aldi, which seems to sell lots of other paraphernalia. If I wanted a hi-vis jacket I'm in. A wine glass or a mug, not so much.

Have also been drinking tea and coffee from the same plastic beaker, given one of the heavy ceramic mugs was cracked. Was quite relieved actually. Thought I'd been dribbling.

Had a walk into town in our wet weather gear earlier. Think dorks in plastic ponchos, especially Al, with his 'I'm an Autralian' wide brimmed hat on top of his yellow plastic hood.

We circumnavigated an enormous significant cathedral. Ventured inside as a tour guide opened a steel grill to admit his three tourists then clicked it shut on us. He even did a little sneer as he locked us kids out of the main show. Not very Christian of him. Must have been the ponchos. 

I saw enough. Have gawped my way around sufficient cathedrals for a life time.

Wasn't a wasted trip. Found a shop that sold cheap ceramic mugs. Hurrah.

Also spotted a Chinese restaurant that looks promising for dinner. Spare me another schnitzel.

Probably should add that the 78k ride we did from Krems to Melk and back yesterday, in glorious weather on Al's 62nd birthday, is one of the best rides we've ever done. Blissful.

Post-trip debrief back in Melbourne

Arrived back in Melbourne last night.  Interesting that I've got a winter garden happening here, as opposed to all the greenery and flowers blooming in France and Germany.  However, the weather is quite similar to that on the day we left Munich on Friday.  Except it's not raining here.  The sun's up and it looks like my washing will mostly dry on the line.

Before I put our wonderful holiday to bed, I must mention that our final few days in Munich went well.

Despite my concerns re McRent, the rental company from which we hired our van, the handover was better than expected.  We'd felt ripped off in 2010 when we were forced to pay 100 euro for an alleged hair and smudge of 'shampoo' in the bathroom as I mentioned in my previous post

This time we had to return the van on the date planned between 9 and 10 am.  I'd awoken at about five.  Special combo of anxiety and the fact that it was light outside.  I'd started my cleaning frenzy by seven.  I was quite irrational but determined that the van would 'pass' the inspection.  Unfortunately, it started raining which made it particularly difficult to keep mud and footprints out of the van.  I covered the clean floor in towels and Chux cleaning cloths and we used these like stepping stones to avoid 'recontamination'.  

We were also concerned about being charged for a faulty latch on the rear door of the van.  When we'd returned our van in 2010 we were charged for a key that snapped off inside the lock.  Surely not our fault but rather the quality of the key?

As per instructions, we filled the tank with fuel then dropped it into the carwash prior to returning it.  McRent pays for this final exterior clean.

Upon our return to McRent, Sulzemoos - 27 kilometres from Munich - we were greeted by a delightful bloke.  He seemed impressed by our efforts.  He climbed a ladder to inspect the roof, lest we'd damaged it in some way.  We had been concerned about hail storm damage, but we were clear.  He surveyed the vehicle, muttering 'Gut, gut,' while I hovered around in my massive yellow Vietnam rain poncho.  In one hand I clutched a trigger bottle of all purpose cleaner; in the other a Chux cloth, ready to pounce had he suggested, like his female counterpart two years earlier, that the van was not clean.  Must have looked a tad insane.

Perhaps it was this insanity that led me to take close up shots of all the surfaces in the bathroom as proof of their gleaming condition. 

I needn't have been so concerned.  The fellow assured us that it wasn't our fault that the door latch had broken and that it was easily fixed.  We passed with flying colours, apart from the 302 euro that we had to pay for damage - our fault - to the table top in the van.  Otherwise, we got the rest of our 1200 euro deposit back.

The guy at McRent could not have been more obliging on our return, including driving us and our bags back into the village to catch our bus to Munich.

BTW we also did well selling back our bikes.  We'd originally paid 260 euro for two second hand bikes.  We sold them back for 120 euro.  We couldn't have rented bikes for eight weeks at that price.  Definitely the way to go if you're ever considering a similar trip.

So, props to McRent.

And props to us.  We drove 3000 kilometres and cycled 685k during our eight week holiday.

Munich, with van and bikes.

I assume no one wants to hear my gushing about our van and bikes, but what they hey?

Yesterday was an enormous day.  Wouldn't have thought it possible to cram so much in.  We're in a big city with an intricate but very functional transport network.  Throw in me with swollen blistered feet.  So first excursion for the day is back into Marienplatz to search for shoes, cos basically, I couldn't walk.  Now I can hobble, thanks to a new pair of Eccos.  Planets - damn you - going in the next charity bin. (First world prob.)

Me: Oh my god, Al! Diabetic feet! They're killing me.  What if I get gangrene? Ohhh! (Whines a bit.)
Al:  You've got blisters! Okay.  Everyone gets them.  Enough.

Next, train and connecting bus out to Sulzemoos - 27 k out of Munich central - to get our motorhome.  It was easier than last time, cos back in 2010 we didn't know whether we'd been scammed when we booked and paid for the van.  This time, we knew that McRent, or whatever they're called, were there with our luxury home on wheels.

Al got straight back into manual mode and driving on the 'wrong' side of the road in an enormous truck.  He had the sweat patches to prove it but have to concede, yet again, that the guy is a saint. Picture me on his right doing the full front seat driver's assistant.  Edge!!  Edge!!  Watch the yellow line!!  You're over the yellow line.  Fuck, fuck fuck!!  Okay, I'm going to try to shut up now, sorry, Al.  Oh mein gott!! Edge, edge!  Don't hit that woman!!  Second gear, second gear!!  (I could go on, and I did!)

Al successfully navigated back to this camping ground, one of the places where we first discovered the joys of campervanning back in 1985 in an orange combi van.  Keep wondering how we managed back then with no communication home apart from the occasional expensive phone call and lots of airmail.  Poste Restante kept us going during those six blissful months.

Having parked our van in the 'camping' we had to get back to Hackerbrucker on the other side of central Munich to collect our bikes.  So, one bus trip and a couple of train changes on the Uber.

Now the fun bit:  finding our way back, on bikes, to the camp.  Not too bad, given the amazing cycle paths and drivers' regard for cyclists.  Should have been a 6 k ride but we cycled on the wrong side of the river and overshot our turn off by a couple of k.

Suffice to say, by 10  last night I was gorged on cheese, seedy bread, olives, pate and chardy and feeling good.

There's something about sleeping in that little cubby hole bed.

Note to self:  a shower token gives precisely 4 minutes of hot water.  It doesn't dwindle out, it shuts off.  I was covered in Palmolive Vibrant Colour Shampoo, having forgotten the soap.  Not to worry.  It rinses off quite briskly in freezing wasser.  The sudden icy deluge seems to have reduced my ankle oedema.  Perhaps I should have tried this earlier.

Tschuss!