Driving in France

So everything you have seen lately from France was spread out all over Normandy.  Trying to get trains or any other public transport was going to be a huge pain so we decided to rent a car and have a go at it ourselves.

This was our first time where we were'nt just going to a city to see the city, but had real purposeful destinations in mind.  I have driven exactly 7 days in the last 20 months so was rusty to say the least.  But the good news was that the cars were on the right and the drivers were on the left.  The other way around like in Britain and I am sure this post would have been titled 'International Incident - American causes 30 car pile up on M25'.

So we picked up the in Calais, and had hands down the least helpful attendant ever at Avis.  Now I take partial blame because I don't know French, but living and working 15 miles from the UK you would have thought she might have picked up some English, but alas no.  We walked out with a key (a key might be giving it too much credit, but more on that later) and had to lock and unlock the doors a couple times as a makeshift homing signal till we found her.

This is it....

Megan the Meagan.  A diesel Renault with zero amenities and a French owners manual.  Kristen reserved a manual transmission because I my old Mustang was, but I must have missed that conversation, or didn't know the context, but not sure I would have been up for it had I known.  We set off and it wasn't long before I was in search of the cruise control.  Well therein lie the problem.  The solution was undoubtedly within the owners manual, but as it was in French it wasn't much help.  We pushed any and all buttons on the dash and steering wheel to no avail, only to find that it was strategically placed in  the center consol.  Why didn't we think to look there first?

And then there is the 'key' I put it air quotes because it wasn't much of a key.  Look at the sice of it too, was like carrying around an extra phone in your pocket.

There was a little slot by the radiuo that you had to put it into and the a push button start stop.  I felt like I was initiating the launch sequence for a nuclear missle, it was just ridiculous.  You didn't even need to keep it in the slot while you were driving, but you had to put it back in to turn the car off.

As we only had highway in front of us things were pretty smooth the first day.  But as we travelled around the French countryside to explore the D-Day beaches a number of other unique problems reared their heads.

First and foremost were roundabouts.  Who in their right mind concluded that the best way to cross traffic was in a circle.  Couple that with signs that are pointed skewed to the direction the mean for you to go, and we spent quite a bit of time going in circles.  Any time we weren't quite sure which way to go I just drove in circles a la Clark Griswold till we made a decision.  All in all though I would say we were pretty successful directionally with no major losts and only a couple wrong ways.

When we were in Rouen I kept having the damnedest time with the traffic lights.  Instead of the lights being on the other side of the intersection or even hanging in the middle the were directly above the car as you pulled up to the light.  I kept doing the lean forward crickneck move trying to see them.  It wasn't till we were almost out of town that I realised that what I thought was the pedestrian crossing lights were mini stop lights for the first car at the intersection.

The mini lights are half way
down the pole.  I thought
it was for the crosswalk.

Seemed to me a awfully expensive answer to the problem when they could have just turned the lights around on the other side of the intersection.

I am also a bit confused about the speed limit signage.  We are all used to one sign that tells you sthe speed limit, and you obey that until another sign comes along and tells you something different.  Simple right!!  Well the French have what seemed to be the most over complicated system ever.  After driving for four days it kinda makes sense but at the time was really confused.  There is one sign at the beginning of the highway that gives a dry speed limit and a rain speed limit.

 Then when you go through a town or something it comes down.  Now is the tricky part.  When you leave town they post this sign.

They don't tell you what the speed limit is just what it is not.  Add on the signs for cars with campers and semis and you never know how fast to go.  On Friday it was raining off and on so I wasn't sure to follow the dry speed or wet speed either.

The biggest issue I had the whole time, all 1300 kms of it, was that the speed limit for semis was at least 20kph and sometimes 40kph less than cars.  That effectively made the right lane of the highway completely useless.  It meant that you were constantly slowing down for slower cars as the passed the even slower trucks.  I am sure the whole idea was for safety reasons but frankly seemed to make things less safe.

I couldn't get over seeing kph on the speedometer vs mph.  Something about looking down and seeing 130 in front of you just made me a bit uneasy.  Its only like 80 mph but in my head it felt a lot faster.

It was nice to get back behind the wheel though.  The countryside wasn't all that dissimilar to Oklahoma.  Rolling hills, cows and trees.  When everyone in the car was sleeping and roundabouts were nowhere in sight it felt like home.