An Admonition:
Dickheads thrive world over, even in places Catbird calls home, like Texas and Indiana. (Catbird hates to think how many folks must judge those states in terms of some of the politicians who've flourished there.) There are also amazingly nice people everywhere, too, and when we travel we absolutely depend on them. So Catbird begs you, please, not to generalize an entire population based on M. Cigarette-with-Attitude described below. Merci.
***
Catbird and Physicist were invited to a "very special dinner" Saturday afternoon, at a truffle restaurant located somewhere in the French countryside. Bruno's: www.restaurantbruno.com
We'd need to rent a car because the trains don't go there, and while a caravan was planned from Agay, the cars going were already full. After her last car rental experience, Catbird groaned, but as she has commented before, many of the things Catbird wants to experience require venturing beyond her comfort zone, so...
So. After 5 days of trying to rent a car on our own via the internet, we got our dear Franco-American friend LT to use her handy-dandy European cell phone and her native French language skills to secure a car from Frejus (about 15 Km away) which, for an additional 15 Euros, would be delivered to us Friday afternoon. The driver would take us back to Frejus to their office where we'd complete the paperwork and credit card transactions, then we'd have the car and there would be no problem returning it on Saturday. Easy-peasy, right?
Hah. The driver arrived right on time, but spoke not one word of English and smoked constantly on the drive back to Frejus. (They were advertised as being bilingual, but if the first language was French, the second was Attitude.) And when we arrived at the smelly, smelly shop (Remember the scummy gray mop bucket water from elementary school?) our credit cards were rejected. All of them.
Duh-du-Duuuuuuhn.
Now Catbird has had this experience before. Sometimes the credit card companies get antsy about out-of-town purchases, let alone out-of-continent, and they freeze the account until called and given the birth weight of Catbird's firstborn child and other such highly personal security information. But M. Cigarette-with-Attitude would not let us use his phone, not for a local call, not for a collect call, not to call a taxi.
Non. Puff Puff Puff.
Could he direct us to a phone booth?
Pah! Puff Puff Puff.
Could he take us back to our hotel? Ah, that he would do for a mere 30 Euros. We nodded, desperate, and Catbird forked up a 20 and my Physicist forked up another 20.
Non.
We did not understand and tried again. Non.
Finally we got it: we didn't have correct change. No correct change, no ride back to Agay.
Non. Puff Puff Puff.
Dickheads thrive world over, even in places Catbird calls home, like Texas and Indiana. (Catbird hates to think how many folks must judge those states in terms of some of the politicians who've flourished there.) There are also amazingly nice people everywhere, too, and when we travel we absolutely depend on them. So Catbird begs you, please, not to generalize an entire population based on M. Cigarette-with-Attitude described below. Merci.
***
Catbird and Physicist were invited to a "very special dinner" Saturday afternoon, at a truffle restaurant located somewhere in the French countryside. Bruno's: www.restaurantbruno.com
We'd need to rent a car because the trains don't go there, and while a caravan was planned from Agay, the cars going were already full. After her last car rental experience, Catbird groaned, but as she has commented before, many of the things Catbird wants to experience require venturing beyond her comfort zone, so...
So. After 5 days of trying to rent a car on our own via the internet, we got our dear Franco-American friend LT to use her handy-dandy European cell phone and her native French language skills to secure a car from Frejus (about 15 Km away) which, for an additional 15 Euros, would be delivered to us Friday afternoon. The driver would take us back to Frejus to their office where we'd complete the paperwork and credit card transactions, then we'd have the car and there would be no problem returning it on Saturday. Easy-peasy, right?
Hah. The driver arrived right on time, but spoke not one word of English and smoked constantly on the drive back to Frejus. (They were advertised as being bilingual, but if the first language was French, the second was Attitude.) And when we arrived at the smelly, smelly shop (Remember the scummy gray mop bucket water from elementary school?) our credit cards were rejected. All of them.
Duh-du-Duuuuuuhn.
Now Catbird has had this experience before. Sometimes the credit card companies get antsy about out-of-town purchases, let alone out-of-continent, and they freeze the account until called and given the birth weight of Catbird's firstborn child and other such highly personal security information. But M. Cigarette-with-Attitude would not let us use his phone, not for a local call, not for a collect call, not to call a taxi.
Non. Puff Puff Puff.
Could he direct us to a phone booth?
Pah! Puff Puff Puff.
Could he take us back to our hotel? Ah, that he would do for a mere 30 Euros. We nodded, desperate, and Catbird forked up a 20 and my Physicist forked up another 20.
Non.
We did not understand and tried again. Non.
Finally we got it: we didn't have correct change. No correct change, no ride back to Agay.
Non. Puff Puff Puff.
So, in a strange French town, we headed out to the street, where we encountered several people who helped us get a telephone card and find a phone booth. We finally mastered the international phone calling system, contacted credit card companies, and ransomed our accounts with the appropriate double secret passwords and handshakes.
We returned tout de suite to M. Cigarette-with-Attitude's smelly car rental office with our newly revived and fully functional credit cards, still hopeful to rent the car. But, voila: he refused to even look at them.
Pah! Puff Puff Puff. Non!
Non! Non! Non!
Dickhead is not a foreign language to Catbird and with a few gestures of our own, we shook the dust of that place off our shoes, defeated by rental car agencies once again.
More nice people on the street helped us find a friendly taxi driver and we made it back to Agay in time for our dinner date with Parisian friends we never see often enough. Especially after the frenetic atmosphere of Frejus (which has more of a Florida/Disney World feel to it), we treasured dining along the quiet beach with good friends and the almost full moon soft on the water.
Catbird was ready to skip the next day's outing to Bruno's and let our week in France end on this tranquil scene. The universe certainly seemed to say: don't even THINK about trying to rent another car in Europe. But my physicist gets revved up by seemingly impossible challenges (and, while it can be exhausting at times, it is one of the qualities we love about him). He said, We'll just rent a car in Nice tomorrow morning; there were several agencies at the train station there.
Really?
Our plan is to:
1) catch a 7 a.m. train and ride 63 Km to Nice and hope to score a car,
2) drive car the 62 Km BACK to Agay by 10 a.m. to join the caravan,
3) follow caravan on 50+ Km drive to Bruno's in Lorgues,
4) eat a big meal, then drive 108 Km back to Nice to return the car?
Really?
We returned tout de suite to M. Cigarette-with-Attitude's smelly car rental office with our newly revived and fully functional credit cards, still hopeful to rent the car. But, voila: he refused to even look at them.
Pah! Puff Puff Puff. Non!
Non! Non! Non!
Dickhead is not a foreign language to Catbird and with a few gestures of our own, we shook the dust of that place off our shoes, defeated by rental car agencies once again.
More nice people on the street helped us find a friendly taxi driver and we made it back to Agay in time for our dinner date with Parisian friends we never see often enough. Especially after the frenetic atmosphere of Frejus (which has more of a Florida/Disney World feel to it), we treasured dining along the quiet beach with good friends and the almost full moon soft on the water.
Catbird was ready to skip the next day's outing to Bruno's and let our week in France end on this tranquil scene. The universe certainly seemed to say: don't even THINK about trying to rent another car in Europe. But my physicist gets revved up by seemingly impossible challenges (and, while it can be exhausting at times, it is one of the qualities we love about him). He said, We'll just rent a car in Nice tomorrow morning; there were several agencies at the train station there.
Really?
Our plan is to:
1) catch a 7 a.m. train and ride 63 Km to Nice and hope to score a car,
2) drive car the 62 Km BACK to Agay by 10 a.m. to join the caravan,
3) follow caravan on 50+ Km drive to Bruno's in Lorgues,
4) eat a big meal, then drive 108 Km back to Nice to return the car?
Really?
Merde.
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