Chamonix to Lyon
Our last day with the car!! Man has 50 days gone fast since we picked up our brand new Citroën C3 in Paris. We have driven a total of 6867 kms so far which was easy to calculate since it only had 2km on the clock the day we picked it up but we still have to add a few kilometers (223km to be exact) onto it today. It has certainly been an eye opener to driving in Europe not only because it was on the right hand side of the road but because the road rules and general driver etiquette varies so much compared to NZ. Another thing I think we both learnt is that some of the roads through France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland are not that different to ours back home. I know we are skeptics about tourists being able to drive in NZ with nothing more than their own countries drivers license but is it really neccesary? Especially when road accidents happen and we think it is because our roads in NZ are unlike any others in the world and it take a lot more skill to drive them. It is true in some cases but not all and I absolutely think that majority of people from these countries (Europe) do have the skill drive our roads as long as they can handle driving on the opposite side of the road. I hate to say it but the accidents are usually caused by tourist who don’t drive those road meaning that they just stay in the cities. Somehow we need to be able to work out which tourist fits what category with their road skills and then allow them to drive. Such a hard thing to implement though. Our final morning in Chamonix we had a few things to do including cleaning the Airbnb apartment we were staying in since we wernt charged a cleaning fee. I woke up and got some of the food bags sorted and left them by the door and also took down the washing which had dried nicely overnight with the warmth of the central heating. I tidied up as much as possible whilst Lew caught up with his family via FaceTime and also with Samuel. The car had been outside for the past two days and since it was -5 degrees outside currently it has a thick layer of ice that needed to be defrosted before we could get going. We moved some of the bags down to the car so we could vacuume the apartment. It wasn’t hard to clean since the level of cleanliness wasn’t that great to start with and whilst it looked ok as you glanced over it I could see a lot of flaws when I looked closer. We didn’t end up using the spa bath as we didn’t trust how clean it was. Pathetic I know but we are both clean freaks at heart. At 1030am we had everything loaded up into the car and we went for a walk into town since Lew spotted a Lacoste beanie the first day we arrived but the shop was only open today. We looked at it in the shop and whilst he really like it the cost was a lot more than the usual beanie at €60 ($103 NZD). We left thinking it was too expensive but Lew was unconvinced. Especially since he has a Canadian beanie and also an Italian beanie so he wanted to add a French one to the family. Going into the website he saw that it was 100% wool so that was probably why it was so expensive and a couple of texts went out to his mum and sister Alice to see what they though. But he had already made his mind up and whilst I returned the keys he ran back to the shop to buy it. He returned with a huge smile on his face and I knew he had made the right decision. We left Chamonix with a beanie to tell the tale and drove the 2.5 hours to Lyon. The road was certainly much easier than the way we had come in over the passes and I don’t think we would have had any trouble getting out if it had snowed. We had planned to go into Annecy on the way but didn’t really know why this was the case when Lew asked me all I said was I knew it has a lake and it was pretty. He then proceeded to tell me that the exit was behind us anyway so that wasn’t an option! Once again the drive went pretty quick and before we knew it we were entering into the outskirts of Lyon. So yesterday on our hike we were discussing Lyon and Lew thought it was a small town similar to Christchurch that would probably be full of sporty people who like the outdoors since the French Alps are on their doorstep. However after doing some research he discovered it is Frances second largest city😂 so much for being done with big cities huh! Last night Lew had also found a place that claimed to sell NZ beer so we thought we would head in that direction to find something to accompany dinner tonight which we were cooking for Nick and Magali. On the first pass the place was closed but after some quick google searching we discovered it opened at 2pm which was 15 minutes away. Due to there being a lot of one way streets we had to do a bit of a detour to get back and found ourselves a park to wait. It was paid parking but I stayed in the car so I could always move it if it became an issue that we hadn’t paid. Lew had no luck at the place and the owner said that they sold some NZ beers many moons ago. Instead he got a couple of craft French beers made with NZ hops for €4 ($6.90 NZD) each! We routed ourselves to Magali’s work next where we would pick up the keys to their place. We didn’t get to chat for her long but at least now we could put a face to the name. Their flat was 5 minutes drive away and we got a park right outside the front door. Three flights of stairs later we found their place but we knew it was going to take a bit to get all our stuff up there. It was a cute one bedroom apartment with a office turned into a second bedroom. We later found out that this building used to be used as a silk factory and the family lived in the bedroom and then the machines were in the living room. This is also why the ceiling is so high so that the machines could fit in it. It’s the perfect kind of place if your living and working in the big city and what we would love to have in London. We look forward to quizzing them on the usual costs of living in Europe later tonight! Once we had got all of our stuff out of the car - and there were a lot of things hiding in crevasses we had forgotten about we tried to give it a bit of a wipe down. I actually ended up making the interior look worse than before with all the smudge marks but at least I tried! Lew had found a place online that we were going to drive to anyways to give the exterior a wash and the interior a vacuum. It was about 15 minutes out of town and by this stage it was already 4pm. The place was called the “Gogo Car Wash” and the guy working there was kind enough to change our notes into coins since the machines only took certain money. we had to translate all the options for cleaning the exterior as there was a prewash, shampoo, wash and then something to do with cleaning the windows and rims, very confusing when we just wanted the good old soap and rinse. Lew made sense of it and we added €2 ($3.40 NZD) into the machine and he chose the "prewash" option which actually ended up being like a soapy water blaster. The machine counted down from 4 minutes as he tried to get 50 days worth of dust, dirt, mud, snow, bird poo and dead insects off the car. Once the machine ran out we added another €2 and gave the car a rinse for another 4 minutes leaving the car a lot cleaner than before but I wouldn't say it was clean enough to eat off! We drove it around to the vacuum cleaner next and it was my turn to get my hands dirty and thankfully I got 8 minutes for my €2 ($3.40 NZD) to try and suction up the varying types of food stuck down the side of the seats and the dirt on the floors. Frustratingly they didnt give us mats when we first started out so it was a lot harder to keep the car clean. She looked a lot better once we had finished and we thought it was probably passable to return, surely they give them a good steam clean before they sell them off to someone anyways? For a total of €6 ($10.30 NZD) she was looking relatively new and ready to take us on our final journey to the airport where we would drop her off to the Europcar car park. It was a 30 minute drive to Lyon-Saint-Exupery Airport as it was surprisingly far out of town and unfortunatly it was just before 5pm at night and Nick had said that the traffic heading out of town at rush hour isnt great. I think we just managed to get off the motorways before rush hour actually commenced but we were a little annoyed we had to pay another toll of €2.80 ($4.80 NZD), BUT it was the LAST toll thank goodness. I had guessed it would be rather difficult to find where we would need to drop the car back off to so just as we were entering the airport I begun reading out the instructions to Lew. It was just in the nick of time as we had to go right at the roundabout and not straight since we realised that it was just Europcar we were looking for and not a Citroen dealership hidden somewhere in the back roads like it was in Paris. The process was easy and we parked it up in front of the office and they checked the car out whilst we returned all the documents that went with it and that was that! It felt a little strange saying goodbye, I can imagine it is similar to when you get old and you have been driving for all your life and then you fail your driving test and can no longer drive...your independence ripped away from you! Well perhaps a little dramatic but we have to solely rely on public transport now. Speaking of which we caught the free shuttle to the airport and then brought tickets at €31.80 ($54.60 NZD) for the both of us to take the express train called the Rhone express back into Lyon. As we walked to where we would catch the train we could finally speak about the fact that we managed to keep the car in one piece over the 7090kms that we drove through France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland without jinxing ourselves! Lew said there was at least four times we almost crashed it but I can remember quite a few wee incidences along the way - a couple of times we both forgot to look both ways before we pulled out (early in the trip), I smacked the wing mirror on the parking structure ticket machine in Montpellier, Lew drove it up on a curb as he was looking for a burger shop in Liechtenstein, we were inches away from running into a car as we pulled into a petrol station in Switzerland and well I think I can just say ROME in general and it would have been more fitting for the locals to be driving bumper cars. She did have some damage to the rims (no dad that was Lews fault not mine!) but that was mainly due to a lot of tight parallel parks. I can say we still dont really know the road rules properly and I guess the real question is would the locals follow them anyway? (we found out later at dinner with Nick we had the give way rules around the wrong way anyways!). It was an awesome experience overall and one day we will probably look back on our adventures and wish we could do it again. But now we had a couple of days in Lyon to explore! We were very surprised at how incredibly cold it was in this city and we thought since we had got out of the mountains it would be much better but we were wrong as we waited 10 minutes for the train in out hat, gloves and warm jackets feeling the cold slowly leak its way in. The train left the airport at 5.37pm and 29 minutes later we were in the last stop in town. From here it was a 20 minute walk to Nicks place in the dark and cold! Lew cut his way through the train station dodging locals trying to get home from work as I ran to try and keep up with him - I think he is just getting some practice in for when we get back to London and have to navigate the underground! Once outside we decided we were both freezing cold and ran most of the way back. We had promised Nick and Magali that we would cook them dinner tonight and we had both decided on a roast dinner but were a little unsure of how late it was and Lew didn't quite understand that it takes a good 90 minutes to roast a chicken! Thankfully the French eat late. We detoured past the supermarket on our way home and picked up a bird, some veggies and some gravy before getting home as quick as possible. Hauling everything up the stairs to the third floor we were greeted by a very familiar looking Kiwi, Mr Nick Palmer himself! Magali wasn't quite home from work yet but we had a lot of gossip to catch up on anyway. Lew brought out the beers and I started getting the chicken ready and the vegetables apologising for taking over their kitchen! Magali returned home not long after and we were greeted by the usual kisses on the cheek and she amazed us with her excellent english! A bottle of red wine and a glass of white wine (I still haven't acquired a taste for the rouge kind!) later we had forgotten it had been so long since we had seen each other. I finally got the chicken out of the oven at 8.30pm and was concerned that I didn't have an oven bag to keep the chicken moist but I must have got lucky as it was perfectly cooked and the vegetables crispy. We accompanied dinner with some broccoli and gravy and pulled the fold out table into the living room. It was a lovely evening but we had gotten so used to being in Airbnb's where the central heating was turned up waaaay to high making us wear just T-shirts inside so we were feeling the cold. At about 10pm Magali went out for a smoke and I told the boys they were on clean up duty. The place has a seperate toilet off the living room/kitchen area but the main bathroom is an ensuite off Nick and Magalis bedroom which felt a tad awkward when we went for a shower. But they said they had many guests and they were quite used to this. We sat back down on the couch after the dishes had been done and Nick played a few tunes on his guitar. We all decided to head to bed just before midnight and I was really excited to finally have a comfortable clean bed with the room being cold - I know don’t judge I known I’m picky! Tomorrow we dont really have any plans but I certainly need to get some study done and Lew has some website work to complete for Smartspace where he used to work in Auckland.