Europe Trip -- Day 1 of Many

At the moment I'm typing this, we are driving (in a traffic jam) from Fontainebleau to Andorra on Easter Sunday. But I'll blog about my days on my France and Spain trip in order (plus, who knows when this will get posted).

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Today, we woke up at 8am (after I was packing until about 1am) to get ready to go. Everything was stacked up in our house, but we had to get it out to the car. It was sunny while we were packing, so that was all fine.

We left Cambridge around 9:30am, and headed straight to Dover. We were booked on the 2pm ferry, and were hoping to make it onto the earlier 12pm ferry instead. However, when we arrived around 11:30, there was a long line at the French immigration in Dover (for once they were actually checking passports) and we figured we would never make it. I got a stamp in my passport from the French, which made Nick huffy (he doesn't think it's fair that I get so many stamps). However, when we gave the ferry people our ticket at about 11:50, they still put us on the 12pm ferry. Success!

So although the ferry definitely left England on the late side, we were at least on the earlier one. The ride itself was uneventful and I slept during some of it. It was kind of bumpy for the first part of the ride, but got smoother as we got closer to France.





The next three or so hours of driving in France along highways were pretty uneventful. It did start raining quite a bit at one point, but it eventually cleared up before we got to Paris. There were also a few road repairs going on, and in France, they close down whole sections of highways rather than only a few lanes., and redirect traffic onto the whole other side of the highway with a makeshift barrier between you and oncoming cars. Which is a little weird, but you do get a Frogger road sign to show you what is going on (it's animated!).



When we got to the Périphérique, though, things slowed down a lot. We spent about an hour sitting in traffic all around Paris. We didn't get to Fontainebleau until just after 8pm, which made us nervous about getting dinner and camping. We attempted to go to a supermarket, but it was closed when we got there, so instead we found a small open épicerie in the town of Milly-la-Forêt. Well, I think it was supposed to close at 8, but the guy in there let us in anyways.

Next, we had to get camping. We went back to the La Musardière campsite that we had stayed at before. Apparently, the main office closed at 7:30, but I made Nick knock on the door until a cranky guy got up from his nap and let us pay (which is necessary to get the card that opens the gate). So we made it to the campsite and ate dinner. We also set up the tent, and I was helpful with assembling the tent poles (my favorite job).

The only issue was that the showers were cold. There were a lot of people speaking French and German who were also fussing about the showers. So I was really pretty quick in the shower before we went to bed.

So that was our Wednesday. Stay tuned for more!