Voulez-Vous ?

So. The Holidays.

We left Dublin via Ryanair on saturday june 25th and arrived in Beauvais. The flight wasn’t delayed and we zipped right through Beauvais airport. (More an airfield than an airport if truth be told). Found the Hertz office and queued to pick up the hire-car keys.

 

Now, have you ever stood and bit your tongue while some gombeen in front of you asked lots of VERY STUPID QUESTIONS. This Canadian guy (trust me, I knew he was Canadian by the time he finally left to get his car) asked question upon question. It culminated in "… does the car have a CD player ?". I thought I was going to insert him into the CD player. Finally he left bringing his body odour and family with him. One of those very odd looking families – the kids all pale and skinny, the mom didn’t exactly do herself any favours in the appearance department and he looked like a cross between Forrest Gump and Bob Gallico.

 

I had taken a tip from someone on boards.ie and got myself a (free) Hertz Gold Card (bascially a frequent user loyalty card). It got me an automatic upgrade on the car type. We had booked a manual Renault Scenic because I could’nt justify 200+ euro just for an automatic transmission. What was waiting for us was a Volvo XC90 which had automatic transmission, AC (of course), loads more room and a little surprise when I had made the days journey (more on this later).

 

Using the viamichelin maps we managed to get around the Paris ringroad (peripherique) and onto the main A motorway toward our final destination (Port Bourgenay which is near les Sables d’Olonne in the Vendée region). It took a little longer than it should have for two reasons – 1 the viamichelin map was out of date and didn’t know about a whole stretch of motorway that would have shaved an hour off the journey and 2 we had to go through Roche sur Yon which was a feckin nightmare.

 

Made it to the resort (a Pierre & Vacance resort) by about 9:00pm and still had time for dinner and a couple of drinks.

 

So, next day (Sunday) I found a remote control in the glovebox. Thinking it was for the stereo system (perhaps to enable the backseat passengers control it I thought…) I tried it out. Up popped, out of the dashboard, a totally cool GPS satellite navigation system. ARRRGGH ! I really could have used this the day before !!!  In any case, it meant all of our trips would now be stress free. It’s almost impossible to get yourself lost if you use one of these systems.

 

The next two weeks were relaxing and fun. Between castles with entertainment and the wonderful aquarium in La Rochelle it was certainly more active than our Spanish holidays over the last couple of years.

 

Check out the photos. Lots of Ice Cream. Lots and Lots.

 

The journey home was interesting. We decided to break it up by stopping off in Tours en route for a night. The motel was fascinating – completely automated check-in and great value (two interconnecting rooms for 1 night with breakfast for 5 people for 90 euro). Tours was interesting but nothing to write home about. Next day the journey to Beauvais, going around Paris, was made so easy by the SatNav system that we arrived in plenty of time to have a lazy lunch in Beauvais before check-in. The only thing that pissed me off on the last day was that none of the petrol stations would accept my cards because none of them were chip&pin. So I had to give Hertz the money for a full tank of fuel which was about 50 euro more than if I had been able to fill it myself. GRRR.

 

This year we took the video camera and I’m going to see about capturing a couple of video clips and turning this into a videoblog. I noticed that I took far fewer photos this year because I had the video camera.