Heart Attack and Vine

I am on the 4th driving day, getting more comfortable with everything the opposite. Pity it's the last day.

It was a smooth drive for the first 100 km or so, hitting my PB of 132 kmh, staying in my lane, possibly increasing my driver score from 94% (yes, the car rates your driving performance).

About 29 km from our destination, we pulled in to fill the car up. No shop full of over priced junk, just us, a credit card slot and a petrol bowser. I'm not sure how many times all of our cards were rejected but petrol pump to car did not happen.

So we drove on, freeways gone, traffic lights more frequent and the petrol station across the road from the hire car return our next destination. We pulled in, after first going into the wrong street, and continued our 'man versus petrol pump' quest.

Same problems. Nothing. We tried and tried, until finally it worked. Hallelujah, 61 euros of petrol. 

One legal U-turn at the next lights, pop the car over the gutter onto the footpath (as we were instructed to do) and French driving was done.

Why Heart Attack and Vine?

Well it's a Tom Waits album/song. The song popped into my head as Annette went to return the keys (controller) for the car. As she returned, I got a message on my watch. A payment of $1,256.36 had just been charged to the credit card for petrol. We quickly found the receipt, which clearly showed 61 euros. A quick check on Westpac showed that the huge amount was done to validate the card, and a refund was done automatically.

Hence the heart attack. If you have to get petrol in France, make sure you have a credit or debit card with a big available balance. I'm sure this has happened before in our travels. I should go back over the many blogs, but it has to be UK or USA.

Then our Uber driver took us to some driveway in the middle of nowhere that was not the train station. I think we had put in the wrong destination in a lost in translation moment (Editor's note: it seems that Rouen has two places on the opposite sides of town called Rouen Rive Droite - I failed to note the 'Gare' for train station). For an extra 8 euros he got us to our train in plenty of time.

We were going to spend the next hours with our bags in storage and checking out what we missed in Rouen 4 days prior, but the lure of Paris for an afternoon was too much and we caught the midday train instead.

Wow, what a long post. Go get yourself a drink whilst I keep typing from the seat of my high speed train to Milan.

The Normandy train to Paris was huge and comfortable. For a regional train it was amazing compared to the other crap we have been dished out.

We tucked into our ham and salad baguettes when Annette started feeling sick. She took three indigestion tablets, looked up the symptoms of heart attack and appendicitis and slowly got better once she decided that we were going to Angelina for a late morning tea at 4 pm. 

Off the train, finally onto the metro, going down multiple escalators and fighting with the Paris transport app, we got to our stop. 

The hotel was very close to the station but Google decided on a scenic walk over a street of cobblestones. It was the long way. Apparently, and I couldn't really see it, the street was famous for its beauty, and the residents request no photos. Later Annette took a photo. 

A 10 minute recovery lie down and it was off to Angelina to spend way too much on cakes and tea and a milk shake. Bucket lists are pricey.

Years before we had tried and failed due to the heat, but you know that from the Paris blog from years gone by (if I mentioned it).

Annette was happy, I would have preferred a maccas thick shake, and we were done. She did object to one thing on the bill.

"How can they charge one euro for a tiny amount of milk?" she wondered. It was for her tea and please note that she only used a quarter of the tiny amount.

"As opposed to 9 euros for a milkshake" was my reply. Good thing we paid on the card where the cost is irrelevant (unless for petrol).

Next we walked to Notre Dame as last time we were here it was closed due to fire. The sign said "closed today" (they seemed to be setting up for an event). This is known as The Hard Rock Cafe syndrome (reference many previous blogs).

I guess we are coming back.

We even saw people on the edge of the river doing a virtual reality tour. A little confusing as we are already in actual reality, but what do I know?

A long walk back to our hotel in the heat of the day, 5 pm onwards, and we collapsed.

Then it was dinner of my choice. I did a quick search, we walked just up the road and we were eating our cheeseburgers and fries. It was exceptional. I was considering what Annette tried to explain to me as "skinny chicken" but when I queried what she was talking about, she couldn't explain. It's been a long day.