France at 200 kph – of Grandmothers, Lyon and Rain

In my teens, I traveled to France with my mother, father and grandmother for a month of sightseeing with a rental car. Michael Schumacher and Formula 1 have nothing on my father and our Opel rental car.

American fathers have an interesting if somewhat aggravating habit on trips. Yes, I am talking about the desire to see everything there is to see. This was particularly problematic in France, which has a gazillion things to see. For some reason, my memory is a blur! I’ll have to refer back to my Nomad Travel Journal, but here we go…

Churches. Big churches. Small churches. Church ruins. New churches. For three days, my grandmother had insisted we stop at every church we passed. She is just about the greatest grandmother a kid could hope for, but she had been a grade school teacher for forty years and there is just no disobeying. Did I mention we looked at churches?

We pulled into Lyon as the third day turned to evening. It was raining. We were tired and grumpy. After a minor argument, we pulled up in front of an older hotel with vacancies and checked in. Family arrangements being what they were, my parents had one room while my grandmother and I shared a second. We all agreed to take a nap and meet a little later.

As I lay on my bed, I watched the rain come down hard on the windows. I also admired the old, intricate wood structure that was our hotel. I dozed off and was awaken a few hours later by my grandmother.

“The door is stuck!” she told me.

Grumbling, I walked over to the door and gave it a yank. Then I gave it another yank. Like a bad comedy, I put one leg up on the wall and yanked again. Alas, the wood seemed to have swollen and jammed the door shut. I couldn’t budge it.

At this point, my grandmother made a passing comment about the two years of French I was taking in high school and pointed to the phone. Dutifully, I called down to the lobby and chaos ensued. Somehow, we had lost the key, so I couldn’t tell them what room we were in. It just got worse.

What is the French word for “door?” Don’t know? Neither did I nor do I now. All I could say to the person at the front desk is, “We are stuck!”

To top matters off, I also started yelling my last name, Chapo, thinking they would at least come investigate. After being hung up on twice, it occurred to me that the pronunciation of my last name means “hat” in French. Yes, I was yelling,

“We are stuck! Hat!”

“We are stuck! Hat!”

Intensely cussing up a storm, I walked over to the door and banged it with my fist. It bounced open. My grandmother and I stared at each other and burst out laughing.

I hoofed it to my parent’s room to tell them the story. Half way through the tale, my mother plugged in her hair dryer, flipped it on and blew out the electricity for the entire floor.

We left very early the next morning.

Nearly Broke in Nice, France

I had been backpacking for three months around Europe and had reached my final destination of Nice. Too bad I had 10 days till my flight home and I was nearly broke!

As I sat in the Gar de Nice, the train station, I started giving serious thought to how I was going to survive for 10 days on $150.00. I had just arrived from two weeks in Barcelona, a Spanish girlfriend and, well, it had seemed worth it at the time.

Lodging seemed like a good place to start. Hmmm…the Ritz? Probably a bit pricey. Eventually, I found a bed in a communal room in a hotel with a lot of character. By communal, I mean eight beds for both boys and girls in one room. By character, I mean the place was old when Napoleon was in power. The snoring alone was enough to raise the ancient roof.

Still, it only set me back $8 a night, so I had $70 to live off for ten days. $70 doesn’t go particularly far in Nice and some involuntary dieting was coming front and center in my mind. Even McDonalds was expensive, but the clean bathrooms made a daily trip worth it.

Fortunately, one of my roommates was Thomas from England. He was broke as well, but intentionally so. He had come down from London to relax on the beach. Every night, he went out and played guitar in front of cafes for spare change. He made the equivalent of $10 to $15 a night and felt he was playing well. I pointed out the money was being paid to make him go away. He just smiled.

Thomas soon figured out I was dead broke and empathized with my situation. For the next 10 days, I would follow him on his musical rounds and keep an eye out for the police. Apparently, the local authorities frowned upon freelance guitar sessions. This was particularly true when he played the extended version of “Hey, Jude” in front of diners that weren’t tipping.

Afterwards, we would buy wine and grab a bus to Villefranche Sur Mer, a beach area just to the east of Nice proper. There we would visit various friends Thomas had made over the years, drink wine and eat until the wee hours of the morning.

I have to admit is was a very good time and I was melancholy when the day of my flight finally came. Okay, the snoring in the room was obnoxious, but you could avoid it by staying up all night!

If you get stuck in Nice and are low on funds, Thomas still goes every summer. He’s the tall guy singing Beetles tunes off key.