Some oddities on the way to Paris

Thursday 21/6. Today started off OK, I took the suitcases to the car and brought back a paper-bag. I asked Jean the simple question “What is the opposite of Pi…. Off?” Her answer “Found.” How do we get to that? Well, we misplaced a paper bag containing about 50 postcards bought during the river cruise. Some had even been written on ready to send. Jean searched high and low and everywhere in between. No paper bag, no postcards. Jean was well and truly Pi…. Off (to put it politely), as she told some of her friends in an email. I found the missing bag. All happy, we got in the car, instructed Annie to take us to Amiens, not far from Villers-Bretonneux (our destination on the way to Paris). I estimated it was about 150km due south. We followed Annie’s instructions and discovered she calculated 167km. I must be wrong. Now remember back on Tuesday, I made a mistake on our way to Boulogne-s-Mer on the way to Dunkerque when Annie was misbehaving. Today she was trying to make up for her bad day, because she first took us west to Boulogne-s-Mer then south-southeast to Amiens. I guess it may have been faster as over ¾ of the trip was on a 130km/hr expressway. Gina cruises well at 125km/hr but slows a bit on the up-hills. Just prior to Amiens, we reset Annie to V-B and with a bit of local help arrived at the Australian War Memorial and Cemetery. We spent about an hour walking around here, then headed off for lunch. Not much on offering in V-B, so we headed to the local supermarket. Another oddity! Jean shopped in her first Aldi today. After a home-made (in Gina) lunch, we headed to the Franco-Australian Museum. As we were about to walk in, a bus-load of high-school aged boys and a couple of adults followed us in. All the boys had Australian sports shirts on. They were a cricket team from St Pauls High School on their way to England to play cricket during their mid-year school break. (For non Brisbane people, St Pauls High School is not far from where we live in Brisbane). The Museum was very interesting. As we were about to leave the museum, thunder and lightning arrived. We quickly jumped in the car and started our trip to Paris through torrential rain. About another 150 km to go, and the first 40 was in driving rain. We arrived in arrived on the outskirts of Paris at about 6:00PM right in the middle of evening peak hour traffic. Induction by fire, into driving in Paris. What fun! Left turn into a narrow 2-way street to be confronted by 2 cars side-by-side facing us, we squeezed past. Need to stop to check the map, pulled into a small space behind another car, to then discover that we were both in a bus stop, bus arrives, no problem, just stop in the middle of the road and let passengers off. Paris parkers are ingenious. At most intersections, you can find four cars parking at 45 degrees on the corners of the intersections. Easy parking, difficult to negotiate the corner while driving. At last we made it to the hotel, checked in, had dinner, took a short walk to find the Metro station (with the help of a young Paris girl) for tomorrow’s escapade into Paris city. Jean hopes that loos are easier to find in Paris. She is getting tired of having to search out a WC and then pay EU$0.50 to use it. It seems that all eating places must have a loo and they are free if you are a patron, so we call in; buy a cup of coffee, dispose of the previous cup of coffee, then drink the fresh one.