Thursday, May 13, 2010

Chapter 31 - Road Trip to Lille

Monday 3rd - Sunday 9th May

This week features the most eagerly anticipated of all our trips away! The road trip to Lille, more about which will follow very shortly. Firstly though, the rest of the week...as ever, a normal week at school. Now that's out of the way, we can move on to the story!

The Road Trip began for us early on Friday morning. My first job was to head over to the car hire place and pick up the car. I'd arranged to pick up the car at 7.30 when the office opened. This meant catching the bus from home at 7, necessitating waking up at 6. Not particularly unpleasant really, given that I get up then two mornings a week anyway. So, the bus and tram journeys to the office were as normal as they get!
 

 We'd booked a car in their "Economy" range, because it had enough room for 4 people and was cheap too. The website said it would be a Volkswagen Polo or similar; so I expected an Opel Corsa, or a Ford Fiesta etc. To my surprise, neither of these was the car I got. The car I got was a Peugeot 308 cc. Still, it was a car..how impractical and annoying could it be? 

The first drive in the car was very short, about 3 feet in fact, at which point I stalled it. Still, I expected that, unfamiliar clutch biting point etc, so I'd got my stall out of the way, so off I went. For about 6 feet, when I stalled it again. Never mind, it takes a bit of time to get used to a new car. The next journey took me the 15 feet to the exit of the Car Hire car park. Here I had to be quite nippy to get out on to the road without being involved in an accident. I fluffed it up again. I stalled on my first attempt, and had to wait about 5 minutes for a big enough gap in the traffic. Eventually I made it on to the road to the Hauptbahnhof, where I was meeting the others. Now I should point out here that I have never driven a left-hand drive car before, so judging the width of the car was a bit of a challenge at times. Hence why I might have bumped it over a couple of curbs, and maybe the tramline too. Still, I arrived at the station at 7.45, where I saw the others waiting dutifully outside with their suitcases. 

Now, the first concern was the size of the boot. I wasn't sure it would take all the suitcases we had. In fact, I needn't have worried, the boot was almost as big as the rest of the car! So, we managed to get everything in the boot. And then came sorting out seating arrangements. I thought it best if I took the front left seat. In fact, I insisted upon it. When we'd managed to get into the car, which was neither elegant nor dignified (certainly not for me). Despite sitting in the front, I had a getting-in issue; that the steering column and my right leg collided every time I got in! Still, we all managed to get ourselves seated, and then came setting up the GPS. We set Lille as the destination, and we settled down for a relaxing morning meander through the EU heartland. 


After about 10 minutes driving, I found a flaw with the SatNav. It was in German, which may not sound like an issue, but when you're driving round an unfamiliar city, you don't have time to translate the instructions or ask stupid questions, so we changed it to English. Problem solved...almost! The SatNav insisted on telling me to "Enter the Roundabout", which is not an instruction with which I am overly familiar. Aside from this minor irritation it was a tool without which we may never have found Lille city centre!

After about 2 hours of driving, we had passed through Luxembourg and had entered Belgium. Now, anyone who has ever driven on a motorway will confirm that motorway driving is the most boring of all types of driving. Irrespective of where you are, miles and miles of concrete with limited exit points and nothing exciting to look at cannot ever be interesting. In Belgium, they have taken measures on this subject. They have planted trees on both sides of each carriageway, thus providing a green wall on both sides of your side of the motorway. So when the SatNav pipes up "Continue on the motorway for 189km" you can understand why I began to lose the will to live! If that wasn't bad enough, the maximum speed was 120km/h, which is 10km/h less than in France and Luxembourg, and infinitely less than in Germany. 

After what seemed like two lifetimes of tree-lined motorway, we arrived in Lille, the capital of the Nord Pas de Calais region of France. It was in Lille I was reminded of the style, finesse, and skill of French drivers. As I was going round a roundabout, in the correct fashion, a car appeared off my nearside wing and showed me that his horn worked, naturally I was pleased for him, and expressed my gratitude for his musical display in some clear, yet concise, French adjectives. Shortly afterwards we found a street in front of a car park, where people appeared to be parking for free. So, being British, and therefore not keen on rocking the boat (unlike Hazel Blears' brooch), I followed suit and parked behind a remodelled Renault 5. By remodelled I mean dented. 

As ever, our first aim was the Tourist Information Office, which we found. Then, following our Standard Operating Procedure, we headed for a cafe, where we enjoyed some of the French cafe culture, and consulted the map. We did a circular walk of Lille, taking in some of the sights, including the Cathedral, the Citadel, the Place de la Republique (obligatory in every French town), the City Hall. The walk ended in the shopping centre between the two Lille train stations (Lille Gare Europe [handles the TGVs & Eurostar] and Lille Gare Flandres [handles the normal trains]), where we popped into Carrefour in order to get food for the morning, and the following day. About five o'clock we decided to head for the hotel. 

This should have been relatively easy...I'd consulted the map on the website of the hotel and wrote down the junction where the hotel was. I input this into the SatNav. I followed the instructions to the letter. We found ourselves in a town, which wasn't too much of a problem, from my experience of staying in HotelF1's before I knew that they can are often on industrial/commercial estates. So we drove round a bit, this didn't help. After about 30 minutes of driving around aimlessly, I pulled over and accosted a man putting his rubbish out. He gave me some pretty good directions (in that they took me to the right town). When we got to the other town, we reached a T-Junction, and being whimpish and slightly annoyed at the whole saga, I did a U-Turn and drove to the Novotel we'd previously passed to ask them for directions. (They're both part of the Accor group, so I figured, correctly, that they'd know). After finally receiving adequate directions we got to the hotel, some 90 minutes after leaving Lille. We checked in and went off in search of food. After food, we popped over to the Auchan, just to see what it was like. We spent the rest of the evening playing cards before heading to bed relatively late.

Saturday was the trip to the beach. This was Harriet's main reason for wanting to go to Lille! We set off for Calais about 9.45, and arrived about 11. So it wasn't too far. On arrival in Lille, we drove following Harriet's sixth sense for finding the sea. We arrived, shortly after, at Calais/Bleriot Plage, which is just South of Calais, and has a long sandy beach. The beach itself, though, was swathed in an unidentified white foam. Still, it was a beach, by the seaside. Even I deicided to go paddling in the English Channel. The Channel is not the Med, nor is it the Carribean. It was bloody freezing, but after a while you stop being able to notice it, largely because your toes have dropped off and are feeding the fishes! As we walked along the beach we saw some of the German pillboxes and beach defences that have collapsed down the dunes in Calais. After taking in the view, and enjoying the feeling of sand under your feet, we headed back to the car and set Boulogne as the destination (when we'd worked out how to spell it!).

After about half an hour of motorway driving we arrived in Boulogne, from where we walked down to the town for a spot of lunch. After lunch we walked down to the harbour, and turned right towards the beach. We spent a bit of time sat on the beach passing the time of day, or in Harriet's case, burying Esther's hand!?! On the way back to the car, we came across a seal show in an aquarium-esque place. We watched it for a bit, before heading back up to the Old Town in Boulogne. The Old Town in Boulogne is very picturesque. If you took away the cars, it could have easily been a scene from the immediate post war period. It looked almost unchanged! We walked back to the car, and began the drive back to the hotel, which I had saved as a favourite, to save the hassle of trying to find it again! The journey back avoided the motorway most of the way, which meant that it was quite an interesting drive, with plenty to see on the way. Another evening of cards followed a very nice day out.

Sunday was the final day of our road trip, and the day we'd decided to spend in Brussels. Brussels was on the way back to Saarbruecken, and only about an hour away from the hotel. So, at about 10.30 we set off from the hotel, and I got used to looking at trees for a while.  We got to Brussels in good time, probably because it was a Sunday! Then came the issue of parking. I imagine this problem is the same for every capital city. Finding a space was the first challenge, but that one was solved after only about 10 minutes, which I thought was quite quick. The next, and biggest problem, was actually putting the car in the space. Now, as anyone who has been in a car with me will know, reverse parallel parking is not my biggest strength. Now remember that I'm on the other side of the car, and trying to do it. Three attempts later, I'd managed it! 

Following the parking debacle, we undertook a walk around Brussels. Taking in sights such as the Grande Place, Le mannequin pis, Cathedral, National Palace, Royal Palace and a series of churches. The weather for this was perfect, it didn't rain during the day, and was actually a very pleasant and warm day. We spent a bit of time in the afternoon sat in the park reading our books and enjoying the sunshine. After we'd finished our walk, we headed back to the car, to try and find the EU Parliamentary buildings. This wasn't too difficult, nor was it too difficult to find somewhere to park nearby. They are quite impressive buildings, and somehow not out of place in the midst of a park, and older residential buildings. So, that was Brussels, we did do it in quite a whistle-stop way, and saw an awful lot there. It was more of a taster-tour...it would be nice to go back at some point, maybe for a couple of days and take it in a little more slowly. It was a very nice city, but it lacked a certain "wow" factor. I can't explain what it lacked, but it just didn't make me fall in love with it, like Berlin did. 

After enjoying the sites of the Belgian Kingdom's capital city, it was time to head back to Saarbruecken. Back to trees...the most depressing thing was when the GPS told me I had 201km of Belgian motorway to go. There's only so much time you can spend looking at trees. And I think I had more than my fair share! We filled up with Diesel at Schengen in Luxembourg, because it's substantially cheaper there than in Germany, and headed for home. I dropped the car off at 21.30 and headed for the train station to catch the bus home. 


Some of you probably think that was the end of my fun & games, but no SaarBahn & Bus hadn't played their role yet. I was waiting for the bus at 22.17 which should have got me in about 22.30, which never arrived. There was a 123 (mine is the 121) that had been through, but that doesn't go in my direction, so I didn't get on. About 22.35 I saw a 105, which would take me to the bottom of my road, and while we were going along, we passed the 121, which, it turned out, was the bus masquerading as the 123. So, it had run, but had lied about its route! So, after a bit of a walk up my hill, I got in about 23.15 and was in bed shortly afterwards. Exhausted, but very happy! Ready for another week of fun and frollicks at school, albeit a short week this time!

As ever, you can see my pictures of the road trip here!

2 comments:

  1. Such a GOOD trip! I cannot wait to see Claire's videos!

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  2. I think your funniest post yet - good work!
    BUT... Are you mad?! Brussels is an amazing city! (and also - you wrote Lille when u meant calais somewhere in the middle :p)

    ReplyDelete