To Provence

We got up early on Sunday, July 26th, and walked down and across the Saone to the cathedral for 8 o'clock mass. The priest presiding at mass in Interlaken had been Indian; the priest here was African. Mary Joy liked the organ and organ-playing.

We returned to Nos Chambres en Ville and had our last, very nice breakfast there. We said goodbye to Karine and went down to the Metro station. At first, this was problematic, because the entrance we had used before was only for the direction opposite to the one we wanted to go. We had to go farther down the street, on the other side. The Metro was on Sunday schedule, but that meant that trains were running every ten minutes instead of every five. After changing at Charpennes, we got to Part-Dieu Station without any trouble.

Lyon has a TGV high-speed train station out at the airport, but many TGV trains depart from or arrive at Part-Dieu instead. You have to be careful to know where to catch your particular train. We had reserved seats (back in Basel) on a train that should take a little more than an hour to go from Part-Dieu all the way to Avignon. And that's what it did, uneventfully.

The Avignon TGV station is in the south suburbs, about five kilometers south of the main rail station, which is just south of the old city wall. The rental cars at the TGV station are in a big lot just to the north, next to a series of little square buildings holding the desks of the individual rental companies. Back home, I had reserved a car with Avis, through the AARP-Expedia website. The last time we had reserved a car in France through AARP-Expedia, 2009, things had not worked out well. We had arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport to claim our car at the Enterprise counter, at what I had thought was a very good price for an automatic-transmission car in Europe. Almost all cars in Europe have manual transmission, while almost all cars in the U.S. have automatic transmission. It is nearly impossible to rent a manual transmission car in the U.S. In Europe, on the other hand, it is more difficult and expensive to rent an automatic than to rent a stick-shift. Mary Joy and I have no real experience driving manual transmission. So, back in 2009, when we were presented with the key to a manual-transmission car, I pointed out where, in our e-mail from Expedia, we were promised an automatic transmission. "But," said the woman behind the desk, "we don't have automatic cars at Charles de Gaulle." In that case, I replied, we would go to Hertz or Avis. After some frantic consultation and calling, they announced that they were able to find us one automatic-transmission car, but . . . It was a seven-passenger Grand Caravan mini-van!

With no real alternative, we accepted, dubbing the monstrosity (hard to park on narrow Norman and Breton streets, but easy to find among the pigmy French cars) "Pierre." Now, in Avignon, I had visions of getting stuck with another Pierre, or worse. But, in the first of a number of pleasant experiences with Avis on this trip, we learned that we would, indeed, have automatic transmission. When we found our boxy little black Citroen Picasso, which we named "Francois," we at first had a little trouble figuring it out. The left side of the shifter had "M," apparently indicating "Manual." The right side had options "R," "N" and "A." Thus, "Reverse" was where "Park" would normally be, and there was no "Park" at all! In fact, there were indications on the dash that instead of starting and turning off the engine in "Park," you had to do so in "Neutral," with your foot on the brake pedal. "A" for "Automatic" stood in for the usual "D" for "Drive." Once we had this figured out, which also meant always using the parking brake when we parked, Francois didn't present us with any problems and, in fact, Mary Joy, who, as usual, did all the driving while I navigated, liked very much how it handled.

The only problem was getting out of the lot.  Most car rentals we've used have a booth at the exit where a person checks your papers before letting you out.  Here, after going back to the station for a bathroom stop, then spending time figuring out how to drive the car, we finally got behind another car that was at the machine and arm (no human) that was the last bar to our leaving the car rental lot.  However, the car in front of us was stuck there.  The driver was typing numbers onto the keypad (there was a number code on our rental papers), with no result.  Finally, a member of their party returned from the rental office, they typed in a number, the arm went up and they drove out.

Now it was our turn.  Mary Joy typed in the number that we had been given.  Nothing happened.  She tried again.  Nothing.  Finally, someone in back of us got out of his car and came up and typed a different number onto the keypad.  Voila!  We were out!

I had previously worked out our route on Google Maps, printing out detailed directions. Not for the last time, this was almost immediately frustrated by the complications of French highway layout and signage. After a while, none of the roundabouts were presenting us with the directions indicated by the narrative from Google Maps. When I realized that we were north of Avignon and headed in the direction of Orange, instead of east of Avignon and headed in the direction of Apt, I had Mary Joy get off the highway immediately, so I could recalculate where we were on our Michelin map and where to head from there. Mary Joy now reminded me rather pointedly that we could have paid to have GPS. I reminded her, in turn, that she had her own personal GPS, namely me. She made it clear that this system appeared to her not to be functioning very well. However, after a while, with a little luck, we found ourselves driving eastward on the D900

Mary Joy didn't like the heavy truck traffic on this road, but eventually we turned off onto the D2, toward Gordes. Gordes is one of the spectacular "hanging villages" that Provence is known for. It is therefore very touristy. We hadn't been there since our circumnavigation of France in 1999, so we decided to stop there, parking below the town and walking up. It was hot, crowded, hard to find any interesting view. We finally ate a quick lunch at an outdoor counter--I don't remember what or why.

This is in some ways a distillation of our experience of Provence on this trip. If we had to do it again, we wouldn't go there in July, when the French are on vacation, and certainly not in August, when the Italians are on vacation, too.

We drove on down the D2 toward St. Saturnin-les-Apt, looking for signs for our B&B, Au Point de Lumiere. Eventually, we saw a little sign, and followed it and others like it through several turns down various country roads, ending up on a narrow route up the Perreal Hill, finally turning into a gated driveway, where there was a large house, with an "infinity" swimming pool. We met our delightful hostess, Annie, who, like Karine in Lyon, could speak English, but was glad to speak French when it became clear that Mary Joy could carry on a conversation in that language. She showed us our "Sienne" room,

which was very pleasant and had its own porch with a table and chairs, on which Mary Joy and I were soon having a snack, with a carafe of wine.

We asked Annie about restaurants and she offered to make a reservation for us at the St. Hubert in St. Saturnin, so that's where we had dinner, on the terrace.

The meal was good, but not memorable (it had too much competition on this trip). I remember that I had duck breast in cherry sauce, while Mary Joy had fish.

Then we went back to our room and were finally able to phone Mary Joy's mother, using Skype. When we had e-mailed saying that we'd been trying to call, they realized that these calls were not "Spam" after all, and now picked up the phone. One peculiarity of WiFi in our room was that it only worked on our iPad (which sometimes has WiFi range difficulties) in the bathroom and at the corner of the bed that was closest to the bathroom!

And so to bed.