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Dec 26, 2010
We woke up and headed downstairs for breakfast at the hotel – one of the girls assumed the breakfast was complimentary, but it turned out it wasn’t and costed us 15 euros each, although the buffet breakfast was really good (I don’t think I’ve ever ate that much meat at breakfast). We then checked out, got our car, set our GPS to Marseille and I was the first driver! After successfully manuvering through the narrow lanes of Barcelona (without stalling), we were on the highway heading to the Spanish/French border when we noticed the GPS arrival time estimate was significantly higher than the one in our plans (by approx. 2 hours). Not thinking too much of it, we ended up taking the “scenic route” through small towns (including many stop lights and hills) until we realize the GPS is set to avoid toll roads – after fixing that 1.5 hour later, we were on a much better time estimate and driving was much easier for me as I don’t have to go through small towns anymore :). In the meantime, we stopped at a McDonalds for a bathroom break and I successfully ordered myself a Pistacchio ice cream (specialty in French McD?) in French!

Since we were somewhat behind schedule due to avoiding toll roads, and Marseille is a little out of our way (our hotel is actually at Lyon, Marseille was just a small detour we’re taking on the way), we ended up opting to stop by smaller towns that are along the way to Lyon, under the argument that these small towns are not accessible by train and since we have a rental car, we should take advantage of it. So we ended up stopping at a bunch of small towns – and not grabbing lunch at all :|. These small towns definitely gave me a first taste of France, and they include:

Narbonne

Béziers
This town was literally on the top of a hill and this is my first major failure driving stick in Europe – I stopped uphill at a stop light and couldn’t start on a green, with a queue of 5-6 cars behind me :(. After failing enough times that the light went from green back to red, I ended up struggling to pull the car aside to a little alley to let cars pass, and then backed out and successfully started again. I blame the lack of a handbrake for this failure 😛 I opted to switch drivers when we left Béziers.

Montpellier
We arrived here at sunset and was rushing to get shots with the last light of the day. The photos turned out quite amazing – definitely one of the better ones from this trip artistically speaking (I’m sure there are comparable ones later on :P).

After grabbing dinner at a local cafe at Montepellier (some yummy French food), we started our 3.5 hour drive towards Lyon. I was half napping in the backseat when I felt the car “stalling” – although it was really bizarre because the car was going around 130km/h (the speed limit for major highways in France is 130km/h) in 6th gear, and so I thought “how do you stall in 6th?”. Apparently the car just abruptly lost gas, and downshifting to 4th did not help “revive” the accelerator. Thankfully this was around 10pm and there was sparse traffic on the highway, so with the momentum of 130km/h, we successfully made it from the left lane to the right shoulder safely. After restarting the car and experiencing the same thing a short distance later in 2nd/3rd gear, we gave up and parked the car at the shoulder and called Hertz. Since having a rental car breaking down on the highway in a foreign country is not common experience any of us have, we ended up making a number of mistakes that required multiple calls.

Call 1: Our car broke down on A9 and south of D59, we’re at the right shoulder of the highway, cannot see highway markers nearby.
Hertz: We’ll send a tow truck with a mechanic to check out your car. (At least they spoke English)
<5 minutes later>
Call 2: We called a few minutes ago requesting a tow truck, and was wondering if the tow truck will be able to fit 4 people plus our luggage. (This was after I recalled the last tow truck experience with sadd3j’s mx3 in Scarborough when only 1 person was allowed to ride in the tow truck)
Hertz: No problem, 4 people can fit.
<5 minutes later>
Call 3: We called before about our rental car broken down at A9 and south of D59, but we provided the wrong address – we are actually on A7 and South of D59. (To be fair, A9 feeds into A7, and A9 does not intersect D59 at all)
Hertz: We already dispatched a tow truck, you’ll have to call 112.

Call 4 to 112: (same as above)
112: … we eventually gave up and hung up.

In the meantime, highway patrol did stop by to check on us; after reassuring them a tow truck is on the way, they left, only to have a second highway patrol car drop by another 10 minutes later, and this time they offered to stay behind us (with their flashing lights) until the tow truck arrives so we are more visible.

30 minutes later, the tow truck / mechanic arrived but he only spoke French – so we struggled to explain the problem to him, and he eventually towed our car… with all of us on board on the back of the tow truck! It was like a rollercoaster ride going through all kinds of backroads and frankly, a little disconcerting since we have no idea where he is taking us. During this time, we also theorized that the problem was possibly because… we’re out of gas! This was because throughout the day I was commenting on how odd the fuel indicator on the dash was, that the tank was still full after driving 200+km (from 10 to 2 at least). (The fuel indicator did slowly start to go down afterwards) So, we thought maybe the fuel indicator was broken and we were in fact out of gas, which seems somewhat consistent with what we experienced (I’ve never ran out of gas with my car so I wouldn’t know what to expect).

The tow truck finally stopped at a garage (apparently the tow truck driver is the garage mechanic) and after explaining how we may not have enough “l’essence”, we fueled up the tank and the mechanic took the car for a test drive, only to experience the same issue twice. He eventually gave up diagnosing the problem, and we called Hertz. Since the car cannot be fixed on the spot, Hertz offered to send us a cab to take us to the nearest town and pay for our hotel for the night. However, we told Hertz that we have a hotel prepaid in Lyon already, so Hertz offered to give us a cab ride to Lyon instead. We waited another 30-45 minutes for the cab to come to the garage to pick us up, and by the time we got into the cab, it was around past 1am, and we’re still 1.5h to 2h away from Lyon.

Almost 2h later, the Rhone River was in sight and we arrived at Lyon, with a whopping cab fare of 480 Euros – probably the most expensive cab ride I’ll ever have in my life! We stopped in front of Hotel du Simplon (which apparently was famous enough to make it to the list in the Lonely Planet guidebook – more on this later), worried that the hotel would be closed already and we would have to wait outside in the cold for the morning before we can check-in, but alas there was someone waiting for us at the reception and we checked in successfully to our rooms. Fortunately the itinerary tomorrow was to tour Lyon using public transit, so we didn’t need to use our rental car in our plans anyway – but not that we cared at this point since we were so exhausted.

A word on Hotel du Simplon – this hotel used to be someone’s mansion, which was converted into a hotel with 35 rooms or so. The interior was antique looking (so old and classy but not dirty) – the elevator was a dinky one (it could only fit one person+luggage) and had a gate which you’ve to close manually before the elevator moved, just like in old movies :). The rooms were definitely clean and comfortable, which was assuring because we made reservations to stay here for 3 nights! Being a classic hotel, they had one strange rule where you have to leave the keys (fancy looking mechanical ones) at the front desk before you leave the hotel, and every time you come back you’ll have to ask for them again at the receptionist.