Just a Taste of France

Berlingo Betty

In Frankfurt, we picked up our car--once again choosing to lease from Europe By Car.  This year we chose a Citroen Berlingo--a utilitarian, box-like, but roomy French built car.  Since John and Bonnie were still traveling with us, one of the most important criteria was that it had enough room for all of our luggage, and that it did.

It's even fairly comfortable, after learning to adjust seats, both front and back.  Rick Steves recommends leasing a car if you are staying more than a month, and, although not cheap, it is a lot more reasonable than renting a car, one reason being that you are fully covered by their insurance.

Larry w/ Charlie Chaplin (Lausanne)

It always takes just a little while to get to know a new car and its own peculiarities, especially the radio and the GPS.  This time, the dealer, who was very fluent in English, was kind enough to make sure that she (and we always think of the GPS as a she) spoke English. Stopping for the first time to put in fuel--got to remember that it takes diesel, not gas and what do they call diesel in Germany, France, and Italy--it's something different in each country. Why is it that we still can't find a decent classical music station? How can we get it to connect Bluetooth to the iPhone--still haven't mastered that.

Driving in Europe is not cheap.  Many of the major roads, especially in France and Italy, are toll roads and a two hour trip can easily cost 15 to 20 Euros.  Filling up the tank will set you back 75 Euros--but we think we are getting 15 kilometers to the liter (50 miles to the gallon?).

On our last day with John and Bonnie, we were all up at 6:00 in the morning, said goodbye to Edda and Helmut, and then off to the Frankfurt airport.  Gracie the GPS lady got us back to the right  terminal and on time.  We unloaded and said goodbye and headed back to the highway to drive to Segny, France to visit with our friends, Avril & David Quarrie. David thought it should take six hours.

Swiss Alps

Ten hours, and lots of rainy weather and twisty mountain roads later, we finally arrived at their lovely home, which is located just over the French border from Geneva, Switzerland.  Why ten hours to go 500 kilometers?

Well, we didn't have a paper map: we didn't have any idea really how we should get there except that we knew to avoid driving in Switzerland--there's a 40 Euros tag needed just to use Swiss roads; and we were still getting to know all of the intricacies of GPS navigating (like avoid toll roads or not, etc).

Despite being three hours later than expected, we were greeted with big hugs, some lovely French wine, and a delicious meal; and great conversation as well.

We met David and Avril more than 20 years ago while Scottish Country Dancing--they are both lovely, lovely dancers, super teachers and wonderful people. They moved to Europe more than a decade ago when David was recruited to work for CERN--he was part of the team that proved the actual existence of  Higgs Boson particle. Recently retired, he is still involved in some other projects on a part time basis.

Avril & David in the car he built:  Lulubell

Avril retired a few years ago, and in addition to dancing and teaching, she has created an extraordinarily beautiful garden at their home. 

We so enjoyed walking through the garden with Avril, listening to her stories about all that has been involved in creating this special place--a lot of hard work and planning--and eating some of her produce, including strawberries and spring salad. Some of the time while Avril worked in the garden, David built a three wheeled kit car in their garage.  Both really love tooling around the countryside in Lulubell, and the response from passersby is lots of fun. David gave Larry a short demo-ride around town--what fun!

French landscape

At two nights, our stay with them was too short (at least we thought so & we hope they did), but it included a spectacular driving tour (not in Lulubell--she only hold's two) along the shores of the Lake from Geneva to Lausanne and through some of the surrounding Swiss Alps.  On the second evening, Larry joined them for a dance class in Geneva. Their dancing colleagues were an eclectic, and inviting group of British ex-pats and French Swiss. It was great to be back on the dance floor.

After class, we returned to their home for a late supper--all the while talking and catching up on years of activities since we were last together.  Sometimes, visiting friends that you haven't seen in a long while can be awkward, but to quote David,  "it seemed like we had just picked up on a conversation that ended last week, not 10 years ago." We hope that our next visit together will not be quite so long in coming.

Mont Blanc from David & Avril's

We left the next day at mid-morning, with a plan to meet up with David and Avril in the Ardeche region of France, where they were teaching a dance weekend. We left them early so they could work on their lesson plans and to give us the opportunity to see more of the French countryside.

We certainly saw a lot of the French countryside--with telling Gracie the  GPS lady to avoid toll roads, our four hour trip took nearly eight. The scenery, though, was often spectacular, with much of it quite rugged and almost wild.

One aside: although the French seem to maintain their farms nicely, they are much less concerned about how their homes and buildings look.  Compared to the immaculate, T-squared look of the typical German village, French towns and farmsteads look neglected and in need of a good coat of paint.

Tiziana's in Tuscany

When we started out, we had thought that we might participate in the first part of the Ardeche dance weekend on Saturday morning before leaving for Italy. However, having had a long day of driving the day before, consulting with others, and re-looking closely at the map to see the nearly 600 kilometers we had to cover, we decided that there would be no more dancing for us this time. We needed to get on the road early, as even taking the toll roads, we were facing a 10 hour drive to Tuscany.

We were glad we did as it was a long and tiring journey, but as we drove up to Tiziana's Tuscan farm house, we knew it had been worth the long drive.