Sunday, October 08, 2006

Detours

Have you ever driven a Yaris? It's not very aerodynamic, so driving with the windows cracked open at all makes you feel like you are being buffeted by gales, and even though it's snub-nosed it is hard to see the front of it, and it's tiny but not tiny enough to handle EVERY medieval cloister arch. So we might have put a tiny scratch on the back side of the rear-view mirror trying to park in that 13th-century enclosure in Arles, but hey, it came to us with a big dent from someone else's adventure. So we don't LOVE our rental car, but it goes.

Until, of course, you fill the DIESEL car with SANS PLOMB 95, which is unleaded. Then it does not go, say, more than 4 km from the station. How does this kind of thing happen, you might ask? The gas cap has in big letters DIESEL on it, but someone just ASSUMED she knew, someone who had driven many Toyotas in the past. . .

Fortunately, the hideous knocking that ensued caused the aforementioned idiot to pull over, and once Yaris stopped, she stopped for good. Fortunately, too, a sign pointing to Argeliers said only 0.5 km, so off we went on foot to make a call, since the same person who caused the little problem had not had the foresight to charge the useless cheap cell phone reserved for such times.

In Argeliers, La Tonnerie, a bar, was the only place open, because we timed our depannage for the mid-day naptime that all France adores. Loud American music was playing for the six or so men who were taking construction job breaks inside, so we borrowed phone from an unbelieving bartender, and headed outside. Turns out that our mistake was not a terribly serious one, and after the bartender kindly described our location for the tow truck driver on the other end of the line, who could not find Argeliers on any map, we found ourselves within the hour waving down a grand camion jaune, or, big yellow truck, with a big Saint Bernard decal on the front, and Bernard and sons had us loaded up and on the way to the garage.

So we were treated to a ride to St Chinian, a town known for its wines, deep in the Aude. It was clear from the distance traveled that M. Bernard had hopped in the truck the minute he received our call, because St. Chinian was a good forty minutes into the mountains from our breakdown spot on the D5 at Argeliers. During the trip, the entire landscape changed from vineyards stretched over rocky white limestone to vineyards stretched over red rocks, and the houses in St. Chinian are all built from these lovely red rocks. The panoramas were marvelous, especially seen from the height of the front seat.

Our saviour had us back on the road within an hour--he drained the tank and replaced it with Diesel--and charged us only 40€, plus fuel.

Our entire detour cost us some three hours, and I'd say improved our level of confidence in our own problem-solving, and I gained a few extra freckles in the hot Languedocien sun. Our biggest worry, since clearly the car was running just fine, was that our picnic might have suffered a bit--remember the cheese list from last time? It's been baking in the trunk of the car.

Because, the night before we had opted to eat dinner out in Carcassonne at a little restaurant inside the medieval walls, and to save our market treasures for the road trip to Avignon. The Jardin de la Tour is mentioned in the Guide Routard, and it deserves mention. Our hors d'oeuvres were a cucumber gazpacho, green and thick and carrying some spice or herb that I could not identify, and a terrine of zucchini, cold with a tomato confit and a few slivers of prosciutto; then our entrees were a chicken with olives and citron, and lamb skewers with a very piquant chutney; dessert a soft chocolate cake and an absolutely perfect crème brulée.

Next rule for travel: Get a good map. So here we are in St. Chinian, on the way to Avignon, and no real main road that does not take us through Nimes, which is like the ninth traffic circle of hell in rush hour. So we opted for back roads, saw many lovely little towns, turned around several times, passed through every traffic circle in the entire dèpartment of Aude, and crossed the Rhone and arrived in Avignon at dusk with a full moon facing us and a spectacular pink-and-blue sunset behind us. Our simple guidebook map took us straight to the hotel. These days "straight" means "going down fewer than three one-way streets the wrong way."

Parking in Avignon is outside the medieval wall, or just inside if you are lucky enough to score a blue-zone space. So off we went to get Yaris to bed after a hard day, and we strolled a little bit through Avignon, which only seems to get busier at night, in contrast to the othe little places we have been that roll up their streets and put them away.

Despite our worries about our picnic--we had it about 8 hours late, well-baked-- it was still excellent. The remains of our bottle of wine from last night's dinner went really well with our cheese and olives.

And this hotel has a computer for the hotel guests' use, so tomorrow I will let Dan sleep in again and catch you up on the next detour--back to Arles to retrieve the battery charger, or, How I Completely Missed the Fiber Fair. Today, Dan says he's not getting into a car. Me neither.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

from Teddy; Your misadventures with a Yaris - whatever that is - make for fascinating reading. And I'm even learning a bit of French along the way.
My map of France fell behind the computer desk so I'm having trouble locating you. Keep those blogs coming!

4:34 PM  
Blogger Dorothy Neville said...

argg, spammers have found you. well I guess we will have to type in those weird looking characters to post, eh? you can adjust that from the blogger page. (and that little trash can lets you delete the comment, you probably already figured that out though.)

If a Yaris is anything like a Yugo, I can commisserate. but I only had to drive one for one day all over Chicago. Looks like Venice is coming soon, ahhh, enjoy!

9:58 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Such bad luck! I'm glad it ended well, though.

I just got your phone message. Mitchell and I both tried to E-mail you a couple of times, but nwlink's anti-spam software has blacklisted a huge chunk of ips - ours among them. So we can't send any E-mail to your address until they straighten it out.

Truman is doing great - he walked to the doggie offleash area at Magnuson with us yesterday and swam in the water. He had a bath last weekend then scuffled with a cat in the back yard and got really dirty again... but the swim seemed to help. I've been giving him a chewy bone every couple weeks and he seems to enjoy that (I get them from PCC - it takes him a while to chew one down!). We've been keeping up with the bills without any trouble, although the recycling is officially at crisis levels because it hasn't gone out since you left (oops). I plan on wheelbarrowing some over to Traci's for this Friday's pickup. This weekend Mitch and I are going to move into our new house and the tentative plan is for David and Anne to move right in the day after we leave. It looks like it will work out beautifully.

We love and miss you and hope that you are still having fun. I'm sad to report that we didn't throw an illicit party. Alas. As soon as we have a phone we'll... er... E-mail it to you. Hopefully.

7:00 PM  

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