Hire car

Will does not have the same anxieties I do about being late so he made us go down for breakfast. If I was by myself I would have gone straight to the car rental place. 😆
Really enjoyed my cup of tea from my saucer. Does the shape change the taste? 🤔🤔🤣

Walked to pick up the car which was only about 1km away. Arrived at 8:10am. So not too late 😅
Naturally ended up being way more expensive than our quote cause I paid an extra 10€ for complete insurance cover rather than have an excess. Then was given the option of paying 57€ for them to fill up the car or we could do ourselves. As we haven’t seen a petrol station and more importantly can’t read French so may not be able to know how to operate the nozzle etc we opted for the easy option and paid the extra money.
And the huge deposit.
Quote was 140€
Dinged my card for $822. Sigh. I should get $460 back though.
We are the first drivers ever of the car apparently so will be very obvious if we scratch it haha.
Went down to the car park. Nice enough car.
Gps was at least included so that’s a plus.
As I had to activate my roaming yesterday anyway and I have half a day left, my phone is backup for directions. Which it was looking like I might have to use cause the gps is in French.
Nothing worked cause we were in the garage.
What an absolute nightmare trying to load everything while driving.
Finally figured out gps and told me to go opposite direction of my phone…. Good…

Will Zoomed it out to look at the route but we couldn’t zoom back in. I was trying to cancel the route so I could reenter it. But what do all the French words mean?!?! 😭😭😭
Will yelling at me which way do I go
I DONT KNOW 😩😩😩😩😩😩

Tried every possible button and something eventually worked.

Holy crap on a cracker.

What an absolute kerfuffel.

The road rules are there are no road rules.
Worse than Romania.
I had actual chest pains from stress.
No lanes. No designated place to turn from.
Are you in a left turning bay but want to go right. No worries. Just go.
Watch for the 700 bikes.
Oh my word. It took us 50 minutes to get out of Paris and my professional advice moving forward for everyone is to catch a train out of Paris to pick up your car elsewhere.
Could drive through London with a blindfold in comparison.

Finally on some sort of highway. I was DYING for a wee and finally there was a maccas so pulled in. France is on strike over toilet seat lids apparently.
Fine in principle but the rim is to big and i don’t like falling in the toilet 😆

Drive drive drive and came to a toll.
Erm. What do we do?? 😆😆😆
Pressed a button and got a ticket and the boom opened.
Don’t know how or when we are meant to pay so thats fun.

Better be the best bloody chateau in the world I tell you 😭🤣

Exited the toll.
16.30€ 😪😪😪😪😪
Will have to pay on the way back too.
Booooooooooooooo.

Once we came to the country side part it was lovely little cookie cutter cottages 😍
Parking was easy to find and 6€ which I thought was reasonable for whole day parking when really they could charge you whatever they want.
It was about 12 when we arrived so we needed food and went to the Resturant.
Again, reasonable prices. Will got the Boar which he quite liked. I got “piece of beef”.
To add a dessert was an extra 2 euro so we both did. He got chocolate cake and I absolutely should have too. I opted for a cheese platter. I made the assumption it would come with some sort of crackers or something?
I’m not in the habit off just eating a chunk of blue cheese like a sandwich, like I was expected too hah.
The chateau, as all of Europe is, was surrounded by scaffolding. 🥲

It was very quite which I expected because our ticket is valid for the whole year and not you must be at the gates at 12:43:37 or you won’t get let it. When we entered we watched a video about the spiral staircase which is very cool. 2 entrances and they wind so you don’t cross paths with the other person. Me and Will tried :)

The most impressive thing about the chateau was it’s size. It was basic in design, stone floors and wooden beams with basic furnishings but still makes an impact.
There is over 60 rooms and it’s a massive maze. Every room has a delicious looking fireplace.
The kings room was obviously the best.
It has its own chapel which was a bit extra.
I liked the taxidermies and the antlers everywhere giving off cabin vibes.
Lots of dragons on doors and on the ceiling too which i looove.
The view from the top was nice.
Biiiiiiiiig grounds.
Downstairs was another section that had original bits of the building that needed to be removed and also some old carriages which I liked.
Places like this is the setting for literally everybook I read. Just magical 💕 haha.

Got some cool photos of the front and back of the chateau. Tried to find the horses but the show was 2 hours away so no pats today :(
Started to rain just as we were leaving which was good because we did some off roading on the way because of road closures and the car was a touch dirty 😅
The drive back was significantly better than the way there only Will was getting tired very quickly so we stopped for a coffee break. Servo had a DIY Starbucks machine that of course ran out of milk halfway through our order after we had paid.
So we had to get help.
Lady tipped out our order and we weren’t sure if were going to get another one because she didn’t speak English to us. It took her ages to pour like 10 cartons of milk into a box.
We did get a new one thankfully.
Will said it was surprisingly good considering.
He woke up a bit which was good. I would have camped the night before offering to take his place.
Under no circumstances can I drive in Paris.
We eventually made it back and the route was so much more simple. I think live map updates should be banned of a morning unless there is a traffic accident because the route changed several times along the way which made it 20x more stressful. Turn right. Actually no turn left 😭😭
Drove very close past the Eiffel Tower which was lovely and we saw the French Statue of Liberty nearby too. ✔️

Found the car park. The instructions given to us were poor.
We parked then found where we were probably meant to park but not told to park… so we moved just in case.
Car park is designed for motorbikes not cars. Tiiiiiight.
Next was finding where to drop the keys.
Supposedly near the lift but there are multiple lifts…..
Eventually found.

Went to hard rock and so upset with myself. Ordered a coke instead of a mango berry cooler cause I was trying to save a couple euro but it was apparently happy hour so it was cheaper to get that. I could have had 😭

We are now back home and very pleased to be.
Driving was horrendous but the chateau was awesome!Read more