Actually this is more on the day in general.

Did you known that the Cite des Europe in Calais is closed on a Sunday ? No, well neither did we until we got there. Worse still followed. I needed petrol, one thing that is still cheaper over here. Guess what, the petrol station there is only 24 hour for Frnech credit cards and the cash pumps (where you can use foreign cards) was closed for emergency repairs. We eventually filled up at the same place we grabbed lunch, about half an hour to the east.

The hotel we ended up in is the Grand Hotel Continental, a 3 star rated hotel, but with a lot of character. The rooms were comfy and rather atmospheric.

Well the new holiday has now started. Set off around 8 a.m. this morning with Pak, destination Dover, then France. 10 hours later and we are now in the Hotel Continental in Reims, just on a nice stretch of restaurants and hotels.
Been a long drive today – just over 350 miles with one stop for petrol, the car was well up to the task, though in France it has attracted a lot of attention (of a good sort, though not yet of suitably aged mademoiselles). My favorate was the renault 5 driver who started taking phone pictures of us at ~110 kmh, who then started to look round the car (I let him), while there were lots of waves then some egging on. I didn’t leave him dissapointed ;).

Got a new toy that has certainly made life easier. I’ve been toying with a Sat Nav for a while now, but not liked the prices, especially when you take in to account the European maps (which are a requirement for me). I’ve been watching eBay for about a month now and on Wednesday picked up a Navman CNi630, complete with full Euro maps (140 euros extra normally). At Calais I stuck Reims down as a destination and it got us right to the Catherdral. We even got to the hotel through it.

What we’re going to do tomorrow and where we’re going to head we’ve not yet decided. All I know is we’ve got free public parking until 9 tomorrow morning, but it’s only around 6 euros for the whole day. Suppose it all depends on where we decide to.