Category: driving

The Old and the Restless

On By SusanIn airbnb, Baseball, driving1 Comment
Gratuitous bear statute pic for the granddaughter. Somewhere near the DC zoo, but I don’t think it has anything to do with the zoo.

Surprise! We’re restless in our apartment in Baltimore, so Friday we went to DC to wander around, but first we had a very important errand. We visited the Polish consulate to apply for my EU passport. It was a bit of a disappointing experience in that the room was tiny and stuffy and the man behind the plexiglass barely spoke as he stamped away at my documents. The good news is that he didn’t ask why I speak not a single word of Polish plus we will be able stay in the EU as long as we want (if we want). Aside from that, we took a long walk and did the math in our heads about how house poor we were willing to be to live in a city. I’ll let you know if we ever figure it out.

We did have fun strolling around and noticing that every apartment that is for rent is a luxury apartment. Good for us. Who doesn’t love luxury? Do you think they come with a butler or house cleaner?

We definitely like the restaurant variety and the ability to get around by Metro. We didn’t like the traffic trying to get back to Baltimore. Apparently it’s not only construction season, but car crash season as well. We have noticed that many cities are great as long as you stay in them and don’t drive.

One downside to being out of the country is a lack of baseball, so we’re taking advantage, especially since we are three blocks from the park. We went to a game last week and then decided to hit another on Friday after DC. It was Orioles vs. Guardians (who are from Cleveland and used to be called the Indians) and we were watching a no hitter for 5+ innings (guess which team didn’t have a hit). The Orioles tried to make it a game in the eighth, but they came up short and lost 6-3. Oh well, it was a beautiful night for a game and we got free T-shirts.

Saturday, we did the digital nomad thing and hit the storage locker to swap out a few things. It’s difficult to keep track of where everything is and what climate we need to prepare for. Afterwards, we had a belated birthday dinner for Steven at a restaurant called Cypriana. The hummus was amazing, the rest of the food was fine, but uninspired. We are getting spoiled in our international travels. We aren’t “foodies” in that we don’t want fussy or overly fancy foods just simple food done well.

Today, we decided on a mini-roadtrip to Frederick, about 45 minutes west of Baltimore. It’s a cute little city with a few breweries, a bunch of restaurants and stores plus a walkway along a creek lined with more restaurants, etc. We had a delicious lunch at JoJo’s Restaurant. Getting really good vegan food around here is difficult, but my vegan power bowl was tasty. There are only so many fake burgers a person can eat! We wandered (as we are wont to do) and then got a flight of beer from Attaboy Brewery. The day was perfect: sunny, low humidity and about 80 degrees, so we were glad for the chance to put the top down on the trusty Saab and hit the road.

It was especially nice because the AC in our AirBnB is out and it was a bit balmy in here. We do have excellent hosts, however. They came by with a portable AC unit and then refunded us $200 for our trouble. Sometimes, you just meet good people.

I’m guessing the next time I write, it will be from Barcelona. I’m very excited, since I have never been there, so if you have any tips for me I’m happy to accept them. Or any for Madrid or Lisbon, too 🙂

Our penultimate weekend in Nice

On By StevenIn driving, France, hiking, Nice, Relationships, Travel2 Comments

Friday was gorgeous, the sun was shining, and the temperature was in the low 20s.  We walked from our apartment to the Musee Matisse, which is nestled an area called Cimiez that is straight north of where we are staying. Like so much of the French Riviera, Nice is surrounded by hills, so once you leave the shoreline you are heading uphill. The walk was only about 3km with a 100 meter incline – easy compared to Istanbul, but still uphill. The museum is in his house and much of the collection was donated by his wife. You enter through a recent addition that is below ground level and work you way up. The lower floors display earlier works and explain Matisse’s education and influences. The top floor holds most of the collection. I was very surprised by the amount of work that he did in sculpture and other media as I think of him only as a painter.

Just outside his house there is a large park that leads to the monastery’s cemetery, where he is buried. Of course, we wandered through the graveyard until we found his tombstone (it was well marked, and we really just had to follow the signs). Dead person bingo part ??? I don’t remember. I have lost count.

We walked home (all downhill!) and then had dinner at a Portuguese restaurant (Le Barbecue) that one of Sue’s friends recommended. After dinner, we wandered through the old town and found nice bar (where the waiter refused to speak French to us and many others around us were speaking English, feh!), sat outside, had a drink and watched the world go by.

Saturday, Abi was flying home from Marseilles. Our plan was to rent a car, drive to Calanques National Park, hike for a while, drop Abi at the airport and then come home. Unfortunately, the weather gods were not cooperative. It rained all day, and we did not bring our wet weather hiking gear, so we had to abandon our hikes. Instead, we decided we would have a late lunch and then take Abi to the airport. For the first time that I can remember we found that Google had incorrect information about restaurant hours. We tried three different places, all of which were listed as open, but none of which were. We finally settled on grocery store take out. Not our most memorable Saturday, but it is always nice to spend time with my daughter. There were a few successes: we managed to drive a couple of miles into the park and find a nice photo spot, we had an interesting tour of Marseilles including a “road” called Impasse du Moroc – which was nearly one car wide, and our rental car was a sweet little Mercedes. (I think maybe Steven has been convinced to buy a Mercedes in Germany, drive it around and ship it home. Win for me!)

On the left: A photo of Calanques National Park / On the right: Impasse du Moroc (thanks Google!)

We only have one more weekend left before we return to the US for Thanksgiving. We are really looking forward to seeing our friends and family.

On the road again

On By StevenIn driving, France, living abroad, Nice, Relationships, Travel1 Comment

Today, tomorrow and Saturday are all travel days. Today we drove from Clamecy to Valence and tomorrow we drive to Nice. Saturday we are off to Istanbul.

We have spent the month driving our trusty ride, a Dacia Sandero, all over France. For those of you who have never heard of Dacia, it is a Romanian subsidiary of Renault. We got the car through a program called Auto-TT. For reasons that I don’t really understand there is an incentive to car companies to create short-term leases to non-EU citizens. The leases are tax free as long as they are 21 day or more. For us, it was significantly cheaper than a rental car and allowed us both to drive it. Per the terms of the lease, we “own” the car the for the period of the lease and then simply return it to Renault. Renault provided all the insurance.

A quick recap of our travels included this month:

Paris to Clamecy; Clamecy to Chambery (the Alps); Clamecy to Brugge, Brussel & Chimay (Belgium); Clamecy to Dijon (Mustard); Clamecy to Strasborg (the German border); and now Clamecy to Nice (Côte d’Azur). All in, about 5,000 kilometers (about 3,000 miles).

We have noticed a few things about driving here:

  • The majority of the highways are toll roads and they are relatively expensive. The drive to Strasborg cost about €50 ($60) in tolls.
  • Gasoline is very very very expensive compared to the US. The average litre of gas has been about €1.70 ($7.50 per gallon).
  • The country is much hillier that I expected. We are routinely going up or down 7% grades.
  • The roads seem to be either highways (A roads) or two lane “country” roads.
  • There are rotaries (traffic circles? roundabouts? rond points) everywhere. In Paris, the cars entering the rotaries have the right of way over those in the rotary; everywhere I have ever driven, the driver in the rotary has the right of way.
  • When approaching an intersection, the person on the right has the right of way, unless they have yield or stop sign. That means that if you are on a main road and someone on a side street doesn’t have a traffic sign, you have to let them in.
  • I had forgotten how much I enjoyed driving a manual transmission car.
  • With the exception of a faulty front radar sensor, the car performed admirably.

We had one recurring issue when driving – buying gas. For some reason, virtually none of the gas stations would accept our credit cards. I checked with our banks and they both insisted that the gas stations were declining the transactions before it was passed to the bank for approval. We ended up using a debit card, which worked everywhere, but at the supermarket. We had the very odd experience of paying for groceries with a card, then having the same card be declined trying to buy gas outside the store. Very odd. When we used the debit card, they initially put a charge of $345 on the card, but then adjusted it to the actual amount in a couple of days.

Tomorrow we will complete our drive to Nice, and then return the car to Renault.

Saturday morning we hop an Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul.