It’s hard to keep track, with all the running around, and globetrotting, and that.

So now I’m in Adenau, at the tinniest hotel in the world, which happens to have a free-to-use PC tucked away in the corner. Not even the mad posh Bordeaux jobber had free PCs, pfft. So that’s pretty cool. German keyboards are also less messed up than French ones, which is a nice surprise (of sorts).

Finding the hotel was a nightmare, the drive up from Stelvio less so, just long. Depart at 9am, arrive at 4:30pm; Not so bad, as there was plenty to keep one entertained (such as, nodding at other drivers and getting waves back (less arrogance than italy, over here), driving fast, being bemused by the 6 or more roadworks on the way, and checking every numberplate for brits – two spotted, one got a salute, the other didn’t, though I was too busy driving fast to notice if the be-saluted driver noticed).

Also there’s so much to write about, especially Stelvio, and I have no time, so fuck it.

So it turns out I’m still alive, but my laptop fucking died on me, the fucker. Day 3, the Friday, was using it just fine on the Bordeaux hotel’s net connection, turned it on in the morning and it was fine, carried it out to the car and, et voila, c’est casse (or broken, as less-insane people like to call it). Made it to l’hotel in Avignon thanks to my sending the link to Mr S. Love the night previously, luckily, and him phoning me with the details. Been in Avignon ever since, which is no bad thing as it’s lovely, and I’m now sat in a web cafe in the centre-ville being amused by pretty much every word of this being underlined in red as I type, silly French spell checker.

Next task is to either use this machine to plan the rest of the trip, or do a bit more planning and buy a new laptop off the tubes, if one can be delivered here in the next couple days. Somewhat insane but I’ve come to depend on the thing and it’s so hella useful.

Spot the reference, win 10p. Names and addresses (and dates and durations of holidays and locations of spare keys) on a postcard (or blog comment, for simplicity) si’l vous plait.

Allow me to introduce to you the reason for this update, the €6 can of coke, seen here removed from the minibar in a state of partial undress and half empty:

What’s a normal one of these go for these days? 60p or something? This translates to £4.74 at the current rate, and yet somehow this doesn’t taste 8 times better than any other coke i’ve ever had. The hotel’s a bit fancy but come on, £4+ for a fucking can of coke!?!? Zut alors!

The €5 orange juice I had from the minibar just now also did not taste several times better than any orange juice I’ve had before. I’m going to complain to Jacques Chirac first thing in the morning. Or Gerard Depardeu, I can’t remember who’s in power these days (or how to spell their names, most likely).

Boar- D’oh!

I should get out more.

Talking of which, I’ve just got back in from being out more, and it wasn’t entirely successful. The first restaurant I tried didn’t open ’til 8 (which is mad for a start (hoho that works on so many levels)) and then I got scared that I’d lose the car so headed back to the multi-storey where I’d parked it (no Jean Pierres offering city maps here), which when you add in to the mix the fact that it took probably almost an hour to get there (Protip: don’t try to drive places in large cities at rush hour on a Friday – especially in France) comes to a less than awesome result.

Ah well.

There were some impressive ass-buildings too, that I didn’t get chance to get photos of, stupid Bordeaux.

To go off on a tangent, most of France compares more closely with America than England, I think. Lots of open space and big places, for the most part, and then some more tightly enclosed city areas.

And why are they all in such a rush? For a nation with shops that routinely close for lunch (and a heck of a lot of run down looking areas) and restaurants that don’t open til 8, their hurried driving is at odds with everything else.

Do you see? Bordeaux/bored-oh?! Damn I’m good.

Just a quick update, as I’ve just arrived at l’hotel and my word, I was expecting a fairly fly room but this is really smart. See here: some photos of: it:

Like something straight out of an ikea showroom

The more astute amongst you will notice a vaguely ginger shoulder protruding here; it’s been a long hot drive, I needed to cool down!

Nice or what?

Now I need to consult my ‘Stuff What Is In France’ book and see what I can go look at before it gets too late.

It seems The French are even more in love with The Fresh Prince than Anonymous

10p if you can spot why this amused me enough to take a photo (which doesn’t take much)

Hahaha dirty old fucker

This man’s name is Jean Pierre (probably). As I was taking photos of some shit in a tunnel (non-literal) Jean Pierre ‘hollared’ at me and motioned to himself, so what the hell *snap*. He didn’t seem boss-eyed at the time, but that only serves to make it more hilarious.

Protip – An easy way to amuse/confuse French wimmins in hotels is to not be able to say large numbers in French, such as one hundred and twenty three, and resorting to listing the numbers one by one. I’m talking room numbers, here, and room 123 being refered to as ‘un deux trois’ has caused quite the stir!

The hotel today is a massive improvement on yesterday’s affair, but €90 VS €38 is clearly going to make a large difference. No strange smell in the room, sheets that you don’t just hope are clean but actually look it, Wifi (which didn’t work, alas), a nice restaurant (who even cooked me up the hot shit (a traditional western France dish made of potatoes, melted cheese, pork and onions called ‘le pompt de pompt de pompt’) at half three when they closed officially at 2pm. J’adore du pompt!), easily amused staff (see above) and an ace guy on reception who sorted me with a map of the city and directions to the race track. We will call him Jean Pierre, as that is probably his name.

So Jean Pierre sorted me directions to Le Mans ‘Circque de 24 heure’ and I went to have a gander. Track itself pretty uneventful, what with there being no cars whizzing around it, not really sure what I expected, but then I am a retard, let’s not forget. However, the on-site museum was slightly better, having lots of old cars to look at and take photos of, such as these ones:

A nice old Bugatti

A nice old GT40

A nice old Bentley

Subsequently went for a drive into Le Mans town centre, and after stumbling upon a free (presumably) car park shortly thereafter, a walk around Le Mans town centre. It’s a nice place, and I even successfully stopped for a coffee at a place just outside the most impressive looking cathedral you’ve ever seen, successfully asking for a ‘cafe créme grande passe’, successfully asking for a ‘coke’ a few minutes later, and successfully asking to use the loo (or ‘merde du pompt’) shortly thereafter. Photos of that (the cathedral, not the merde du pompt) will go on when I can be bothered, it really was something else. It’s an hour later and I can now be bothered:

Sat outside the hotel right now, enjoying a beer, trying to frantically type this up before the not-fantastic battery in this laptop dies on me (although I’m really not slating it as this thing has been a life saver. If you go on holiday by yourself and don’t plan anything ahead, a laptop is your best friend, or as the french say, “j’ami du pompt”).

Tomorrow’s hotel is an improvement further upon even this one, allegedly, at €134! Zut alors! There’ll probably be liquid gold on tap, or something.

Oui?

As in, “Fuck, fuck, fuck the po-lice”. 88 in a 50, sir? On the spot 90 euro fine and probably points to boot, although, the swines did comment on how nice my car was, and I ingeniously utilised babelfish via the laptop and 3G to get over the fact that neither me nor the gen d’arme spoke each others language. Go technology! Oh, and they were strapped, the crazy fuckers.

Baise, baise, baise le gen d’arme!

Protip – as much as ‘winging it’ with regards to hotels on road trips sounds awesome and somewhat cavalier, it’s actually pretty retarded! Parlez vous the rest of this post?

It started out well enough with a nice drive to Paris, same considerate (with reckless undertones) and slow driving from everyone as before, until suddenly you hit Paris central and everything goes to shit. Completely to shit. It couldn’t go more to shit if they actually made Paris into a sewage works. Anyway, oui, the ethos here is to get as far forward as you can, screw everyone else, fuck the consequences. People pull out on each other constantly, dive around each other, there’s zero lane discipline (possibly due in part to lack of actual lanes to be disciplined about), and you need your wits about you constantly. Lights go green on a crossroads and within 2 seconds both sides wanting to turn across the others’ offsides have blocked each other in and nobody can move, but the odd bit is, nobody cares or gets irate. They only care if you try and be courteous and hang back to prevent jams; as soon as you do that you get waving arms and horns, and high blood pressure from returning the favour (in a louder manner, naturally, and with vigorous swearing as, hey, they probably can’t understand it). It’s mental, but still a system, and the really strange bit (at first) is that as everyone adheres to it it still works out in the end. It’s the considerate ones like me (me for the first few minutes, at any rate) who actually ruin it, by not being part of the system. D’oh!

OK so that’s quite TL;DR-tastic already so I’ll skim across the rest. Phoning hotels off the satnav based on proximity sounded like a well smart plan, until 30 phonecalls later (and absolute perfection of asking about hotel rooms in French, I might add) you feel like giving up and going home, as surely 30 hotels can’t be full, so they must be discriminating against you for your lovely English accent. So you succumb to doing whatever you possibly can to try to alleviate things, and out of desperation get a maccies, successfully order and eat the thing entirely en Francais, recharge your resolve, and go and book something off the tubes instead as the tubes does the phoning for you. That you end up with a pretty rubbish room is par for the course, but the new plan to combat this is book hotels a day in advance. Result.

Protip – being able to post to a blog from a laptop whilst being stuck in traffic is awesome.

Also France is still full of shit cars. Just shit cars everywhere.

Here’s Day 1′s hotel:

aka rubbish

Oh, nearly forgot – it seems Paris has never seen a convertible M3 before in its life, from the amount of attention and stares I’ve been getting, it’s really strange. Twice some random bloke has said ‘Good!’ at me, motioning at the car, few people in other cars giving me thumbs ups, and lots of others staring and looking.
Stupid France and its shit cars, eh?

Or you will die. More on this when I’m not stuck in traffic.