How's this for a misunderstanding? We've been trying to book a car to get us around when we go to Edublogger's wedding. We arrive at the train station in Rennes at 9.30pm. This, sadly, is 30 minutes after the Hertz office closes (and the Europcar one - they've turned us down already). We rang Hertz during our offline time and thought we'd cracked it. We could pick up a car at a Shell station. Not far - just 100 metres or so. Great.
I should have known better. We're not meant to have things work for us this month. After perusing Google Earth, Google maps, Multimap et al we were no closer to knowing where the Avenue Brebant with the Shell station was. To cut a long story short: Avenue Brebant isn't in Rennes. It's in Reims. That's the other side of France. France is a big place, and it's a long way away in the opposite direction. And no - it wasn't that we couldn't pronounce "Rennes" correctly. Maybe it was the language difficulties when you have a non-native English speaker making the booking at the Hertz end. And a Scot at this end. I'm glad I found out in time. But I'm still waiting to see if anyone will wait an extra half hour for us to get there.
And the gas boiler with which I began this blogging lark in November died on us at 1am today. Labouring fan, nasty hot smell, no pilot light, no hot water. As a result of this trauma, I am able to tell you that last night the sky never grew dark. At all.
I saw it.
Dear Christine
ReplyDeleteJust think of the immesurable joy when you do get to France; good food, good weather and good company.
I've just been reviewing some of your old blogs. Very interesting and entertaining.
Speak to you and John soon
Harry
Hi, Harry - we aim to entertain ......
ReplyDeleteAnne - your blogs seem to have vanished into cyberspace! Hope our hire car doesn't do likewise - let alone the boiler (still no hot water for the third night...)
We had a knackered boiler the coldest week of the year, in December. Well, it was a actually a Gas Leak and we are very lucky to be here to tell the tale. In fact - that was the email I sent to you that prompted you to get me on the blog scene and tell my tales. My sister and I had to sleep in the same room and relied on the smallest heater in the world, given to us by our landlord. I feel your pain - just be thankful it's beautiful weather. Or... is Dunoon surrounded by the ever-lasting black cloud still?
ReplyDeleteNo, Duffy - we had bright sun, as you'll see from yesterday's pix on flickr!
ReplyDeleteHarry - congratulations!