One of the dumbest things was to assume the French would speak English (after my trip to Italy, where I had little difficulty speaking to anyone, I thought all of Europe would be like Rome).
Upon arriving in Brest, we quickly learned that the French do not speak English, and getting around France might be little more difficult than we had anticipated (all of their signs are in French too).
It took us a while to find the car rental place because I did not bother to write down the address before I left (dumb mistake #2). I knew it was at the "gare" (railway station) and figured it would be easy to find. Once we found it (thanks to the assistance of a sweet young girl, who spoke some English), we waited for the one and only employee there to finish with the couple that had arrived before us. She was very slow and I was beginning to wonder if we were going to get the car in time to get back to the ship and get our luggage (that was all we needed was five days in France with no clothes!). Finally, she finished with them and turned to us... Well, while she was going through all the paperwork withthe first couple, I realized my driver's license was on the ship in one of my bags (dumbest mistake of all!). Now I had a real dilemma. If I went back to the ship to get my license, the Europecar would close while I was gone (everything in France shuts down from 12 to 3 - many places in Paris don't hold to that though), the shuttle bus service would stop, and we would have to drag all of our luggage from the ship to Europecar (a several mile walk uphill) and then wait for it to reopen at 3. I was FREAKING OUT! The Europecar lady did not speak much English at all, so it was interesting trying to explain the situation. I'm not sure why, but she accepted Puddle Duck's license instead. I'm pretty sure she was not supposed to do that, especially seeing as I was the only driver listed (anyone who knows Puddle Duck, knows there was no way on earth she was going to drive in a foreign country! She barely drives in her own hometown!). I was not about to question it though. I was just happy to get the car. I was going to ask for a map, but because of the language barrier, I didn't bother (mistake #4). We got in the car, started it up, and pulled out of the parking lot. However, it did not take long to realize something was very wrong. I knew the car was an automatic transmission (I had paid $100 extra for that), but I could not get it out of first gear. When we came to a red light, I looked down at the gear stick. It dawned on me that there were automatic cars that were not fully automatic (I had seen one when I was looking for my car). The light turned green, and I tested my theory. It worked. Yay! There was no clutch (thankfully), but I did have to do the gear shifting myself. The next hurdle was getting to the ship. As I already mentioned, we did not have a map. I am just so thankful that PD is a navigating wiz! She got us there no problem. After all that drama, we got our luggage and started on our way. Once again, the lack of map made things a little difficult. I am used to having a compass in the car, but out little Peugeot did not have one, and since it was just a little past noon, the sun wasn't much help either. Of course, even without a map and all the signs in French, PD came to the rescue! She got us to the main highway and we were soon seeing signs for Rennes (not our destination, but definitely in the right direction).
The drive was very nice. It took about 7 hours, total. The French countryside was beautiful; very country. There were open fields everywhere. The interesting thing about these fields is that most of them were bright yellow (as you can see in the picture above). Upon closer inspection, we found that these yellow fields were fields of flowers! Turns out it's Canola. We didn't know that at the time (I Googled it), so I was joking that only the French would cover half their country with flowers. =)
As we closed in on Paris, the first thing we saw was the Eiffel Tower. It's kind of amazing how you can see it from most places in the city. We drove along the river for a little bit, and then right up to the tower. We parked the car, got out and stretched, and checked out the Eiffel Tower (mistake #5). Before we knew it, the sun had set, it started to rain, and we still did not know where we would be spending the night. One of the few smart things I did was to print out a list of all the hostels in France. So, we found the closest one on the map (yes, we had a map of Paris - not a good one, but it was a map), and set out to find it. It took a lot to find the little hole-in-the-wall known as Friends Hostel. But finally, the flashing neon light came into view. I dropped PD off out front and circled the area, waiting to see if they had any open beds. just as I came around the block for the second time, a van pulled out of a parking spot directly in front of the hostel. I pulled in as PD was coming out with good news. We got a private room for the night! As usual, things were working out, despite my best efforts to mess it all up. ;-)
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