On the road (3) A (hopefully) sunny September road trip to Spain COMPLETED - Page 3 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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Catching up with you here, as usual the photos are wonderful. Those night shots are amazing! Yes, that's a tiny room, good thing you only need it for one night! Reminds me of the tiny room I had in London at the Hotel Oliver. teeny tiny I hope the sunny weather holds out for you guys!
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Great start Cheryl . . . one thing had me puzzled--Why all the police barricades around the square?
From what we could see, it looked like they were relaying the main section of the square. You could still walk on it, but I'm guessing it was to stop people driving over it.
Saturday 4 September – part one: an unusual job for the birthday boy!
We were both up early, even though we’d set the cell phone to wake us at 6.30am. I hadn’t had the best night’s sleep, as the bed was a bit small and hadn’t been overly comfortable, plus I had heard some people outside in the middle of the night. At least Mark had slept well, and as he was the drive, that was the most important thing.
Today was Mark’s birthday, and although he’d have a fair drive ahead of him today, the day didn’t get off to a bad start. I’d been stockpiling birthday cards for the last week, so there was quite a heap of them for him to open this morning, along with mine, with the Madrid Segway tour in and also the tickets that I’d actually bought last December to see War of the Worlds at one of the London concert venues. I’d then got a night’s stay at the nearby Hilton for a bargain rate in their January sale. The concert was for this December, just a week before Christmas, so that would be something to look forward to.
We grabbed the breakfast we had brought with us from home of some pastries and then packed up. We took some of the luggage back to the car and then went for a quick walk around the Place des Heroes, that we had visited the night before.
Looking towards our hotel
This time we also wandered round the Grand Place, which had a funfair on it. To add to the chaos, a market was also setting up. It was interesting to see how quickly they got themselves set up.
We headed out just before 8am and our first job of the day was to find a gas station, as the car had decided she needed a refuel just as we had arrived in Arras last night. We set off, following the directions from Tim, our trust sat nav to gas stations. The first we found was closed with fencing round it. Whether it was undergoing a refit or had closed permanently, we weren’t quite sure. We tried second one and, although it was still operating, it wasn’t open yet.
Mark figured we’d head for the motorway and find a gas station on the way or once we were on the motorway. Luckily, we found one just before we got out of the city and we filled up. Not bad, as it only cost us €59 ($77)¸ trust me, much less than we’d pay at home.
Mark also had the delightful job of cleaning off all the bird **** that had hit our car overnight. All I can say is it must’ve been one sick birdie! What a great way to spend your birthday!
Soon we were off and on the motorway and, for the first couple of hours of the journey, there wasn’t much traffic around at all. I was thinking what a great plan it had been leaving so early. I took various photos as we headed down towards Paris.
Old train on the roundabout with the new high speed train in the background Aren’t the roundabouts here amazing? As you can see, there was some early morning fog first thing.... ... but the sun was trying very hard to burn it off The high speed Eurostar train heading for Paris ... and the high speed French TGV train A French cemetery Approaching the tolls by Paris
I made it, Cheryl!! The buildings in that first town were really interesting.
Happy Birthday, Mark!! I may have missed the real day, but I made it in time for the virtual day in the TR!!
All caught up and loving it so far! Wow, that was a small room. I can understand the hotel room in NYC being small, but goodness, that was very very tiny. No wonder you couldn't sleep.
Despite the birdie-doo, it sounded like a good start to the day. Sometimes it pays off to wake up early! Love the photos of the trains, especially the old with the new.
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Great update Cheryl, Happy Birthday to Mark. can't wait to hear more.
We had some fog here the other morning and my 4 year old son said we needed a fan and started waving his arms - just like they do in his Dora the Explorer DVD. It was really cute.
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Saturday 4 September – part two: “why bother with them?”
It was when we got to Paris that everything changed. You come off the toll roads just as you get to the outskirts of Paris, as none of the ring roads around the city are toll roads, and almost as soon as you do, the roads become a lot busier. Let’s just say that the French seem to have a national aversion to using their indicators. As Mark said at one point, “why bother with them?” and he was right. I think the next 30 minutes or so could best be described as hairy and very stressful for Mark as the driver. Even as the passenger, I could feel my body tensing up many times during that part of the journey. It was certainly stress we could’ve done without but we consoled ourselves with the thought that, had we left on the Eurotunnel this morning, we would’ve been at least an hour or two later hitting this. That would not have been fun at all. :
The closest we would get to Disney this trip
Let’s just say that we were also very glad to be going the way that we were, hairy as it was. The traffic coming towards us, at points, was at a standstill and I can imagine being in that would not have been fun.
Finally, we were back on the toll roads and able to both breathe a huge sigh of relief. It was certainly much more relaxing, even if there wasn’t much to see. There were two things that we did see a lot of on the next couple of hours of our journey and both were things that we hadn’t expected to see in France. The first was sweet corn. We genuinely hadn’t realised that France was such a big producer of this stuff, but there were fields of it everywhere. We must have seen literally hundreds of different field of it.
The other thing was sunflowers, which became more plentiful, the further south we went, perhaps not surprisingly, as obviously they are sun loving plants. Judging by the state of some of the crops we saw, we assumed that perhaps they were being used for sunflower oil, as some of the plants were decidedly past their best.
We were soon passing through the Loire Valley and seeing some familiar sights that we had visited in June on our trip here, such as Chambord and Chenonceau.
Going through Tours
Our first stop of the day was to be another of the famous chateaux in the Loire Valley, just a bit further on from Tours. We were taken on a real magical mystery tour by Tim, although we did see some beautiful villages on the way, complete with some very dangerous kids on bikes, who liked the idea of riding with no hands. Not a good idea when the roads are so narrow. :
Fortunately, we made it to our destination of Villandry, without killing any mad cyclists and parked up. Mark spotted some toilets and we headed to use them. It was fairly basic, but it was usable at least and not too bad. At least we didn’t have to pay to use it, which was a definite plus point.
When we came out of there, Mark suggested driving further up the road, as he thought he could see some parking nearer to the chateau. As my ankle was playing me up and I’d already strapped it up, I wasn’t going to argue with that. He was right and found some parking that was much closer. Even better, once we parked up and walked back towards the chateau, I saw a gorgeous bunch of mooey cows!
We headed inside and immediately found the restaurant and snack places. I debated getting a crepe, but was very taken by the selection of sandwiches they had and opted for a Norwegian one with smoked salmon, while Mark went for the Italian, which included delights such as mozzarella and smoked ham. It only cost us €8 ($10.40), which was fine for a snack lunch to keep us going. We sat outside, enjoying our food, with me fending off various wasps, which was a bit of a pain. As I sat there, I could see my left arm was already burning from the sun it had received through the car window throughout the day so far, so I made sure to apply lots of factor 50 before we headed into the chateau.
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The concert was for this December, just a week before Christmas, so that would be something to look forward to. 
What a great way to spend your birthday! 
I may have missed the real day, but I made it in time for the virtual day in the TR!! 
Holly: 
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