Day 1: Vicki cannot drive in reverse

The last time we were in France for a while, we had a long-term car rental from AutoFrance. The deal is that if you are here for three or more weeks (I think), they rent you a new car (ours is a Peugeot 380, whatever that means) and you drive it and turn it in with the option to buy, if you live in the EU, or not. I personally love it because the car always has a manual transmission, which I love to drive. 

Today not so much. 

The first clue that I was clueless was when we reached a toll gate. Moi, being the driver, I put in a credit card which the thingy spit out with such force that it landed on the ground. There was not enough room for me to open my door, so I thought that I would reverse and get out to retrieve it. But I could not get the car into reverse. I pushed down to move it into position... no luck. I pulled up to put it into gear... no luck. At this point, I'm tapping the bar that keeps us from going forward. So Dan gets out to see where the card was, and it was under the car. Of course it was. Being the Big Fine Boy that he is, he pushed the car backwards until he could retrieve the card. Then we stuck a €20 bill in the stupid, spitty toll machine and got the hell through the toll.

Fast forward to the hotel: We found it and parked, and Dan went to check in. He comes out and says, he says (á la Tig Notaro), "Back up and go through the gate" and goes back into the lobby.

I. Can't. Back. Up.

Out comes the dude working the front desk, who starts to rag me about not being able to drive. At this point, I've been awake for more than 30 hours, I can't freaking get the car into reverse, and my sense of humor needs a nap. Luckily, there is a nice kid/guy driving a van that had to move for me to back up (which I can't do), and he showed us how to put the car in reverse. 

You have to pull up the collar of the stick shift to put it into reverse gear. 

WHAT? Who in the hell thought of that?

So hotel dude is ragging me. I'm backing up and thinking about hitting him. But I don't, and we check in and my sense of humor takes a nap.

Then we were off to dinner. We were early, of course, since it was only 7:30 PM, but we decided to be THOSE people and dine anyway. That was the only thing that gave us away as tourists, I'm sure. 

Dan loves a paté.

Street of Bread

It is 9 PM and the cafes around the square were packed.