Bon Voyage

By Trevor Whitton

Ever wanted a hassle-free guide to traveling around Europe with your family? Well this isn't it. Looking for a list of the best attractions and places to stay? It isn't that either. "Bon Voyage" is the record of a holiday that went horribly wrong – not once, not twice, but more times then you'll think were possible. From lost credit cards and endless battles with Kafka-esque bureaucracies to illnesses, accidents, and run-ins with some less-than-scrupulous natives, it reads more like a list of what not to do. Join our family as we limp across the continent leaving a string of disasters in our wake - at the very least it will make you feel better about you own mishaps, and maybe you'll get a chuckle or two along the way!

What some readers have had to say:

"Every time I read the story, I just can't help but laughing. Love it so much!"

"Terrific read - hugely amusing as well as interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed it!"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trevor Whitton
• Release date: Jan 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465883179

Trevor Whitton

I am a retired recruitment consultant with a strong interest in European medieval history, and endeavor to weave that knowledge into my story lines. My travels throughout Europe (and particularly France) over the past thirty years allows me to bring a first hand account of the places I describe, and provides an air of authenticity to my narrative. I am a passionate and committed writer, and Pilgrimage is the first of a trilogy featuring Jean Bellimont, Scribe of Troyes.

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BON VOYAGE!

By Trevor Whitton

Copyright 2012 Trevor Whitton

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Chapter 1 - The ‘Eighty Kilometre’ Rule and Other

Abnormalities of Physics

‘Always ask about everything in your rented car.

As soon as you’ve got your rented car, ask the nearest person what, and (more importantly) WHERE everything is. You may find that – for some weird reason - your CD player is in the boot, or that the seatbelts are in the pockets of the front chairs.’

(Excerpt from the James Whitton diaries).

May 2003:

‘Where’s the car key?’

‘Locked in the house.’

‘Where’s the house key?’

‘With the car key!’

My wife Lindy and I looked at each other with a terrible sinking feeling. This was the unpromising beginning of our holiday as we prepared to leave for the airport.

It was a long way from being our first trip to Europe, and the third with our two children, James (14) and Thomas (12). This time we had decided to take my wife’s 66-year-old mother Enid along with us as well. For her it was a dream come true, although she’d taken quite a bit of persuading. She couldn't believe that she wouldn't be a burden – bless her little floral apron – but she eventually gave in to our sustained pressure and was now eagerly (if a little anxiously) looking forward to sharing the adventure. Little did any of us realise what a roller coaster of an adventure it would turn out to be!

Locking the keys in the house before we’d even left must have made the Aged Relative wonder what she’d let herself in for! But as far as we were concerned, she couldn’t have been in safer hands. We’d begun our preparations twelve months earlier, with hundreds (well, dozens – I’m a little prone to exaggeration, as you’ll see) of emails backwards and forwards to sundry hotels and prospective hosts. We had the logistics of managing the travel of five people driving around Europe for six weeks planned to within a centimetre of its life, and confidently dismissed any qualms with a nonchalant wave of our souvenir berets.

Looking back, we should have had an inkling of our fate a month earlier, when I opened a message from Lucia – the owner of our Tuscan villa.

‘Where is your deposit? I was expecting it several weeks ago. Are you no longer interested in staying with us?’ Gripped with panic, I replied urgently reassuring her that we were, and that I would look into the delayed remittance straight away. I spent a sleepless night constructing the conversation I intended having with my bank the next day – each moment bringing a new and better way of destroying some unsuspecting clerk's life and self respect.

You know how it is. You run through the scenario a hundred times in your head, always concluding with an argument or sarcastic comment to devastate your foe and has them admitting defeat and tearfully promising to rectify your problem with minimal fuss and no cost (perhaps even offering to compensate you for your inconvenience?). In reality – and it seems as inevitable as poo – the problem stretches on for days and days, then weeks, and in the end you’ve reduced your life expectancy by at least a dozen years, and the problem is only marginally resolved (at best).

This lesson was to be repeated over and over again in the weeks to come.

I can’t recall the exact conversation with the bank clerk in this circumstance, of course – but it ran something like this:

(Me) ‘Where the bloody hell has my deposit gone?’

(Clerk) ‘Which deposit would that be, sir?’

(Me) ‘The one I asked you to send off to Italy two months ago!’

(Clerk)‘I’ll just check for you and call you back in five minutes.’

(Me – calling back two hours later) ‘Well?!’

(Clerk) ‘Well what?’

(Me) ‘Where’s that bloody deposit gone?’

(Clerk) ‘Which deposit would that be, sir?’

- you get my drift. Multiply the above by the number ten, then factor in the need to eventually follow this up with an Italian bank (no – whatever you’re imagining isn’t even close), and you can see that we were well up against it. But, in my innocent naivety, once this matter had been resolved I dismissed the whole episode with hardly a second thought.

‘You don’t think it’s some kind of omen, do you?’ asked Lindy apprehensively. It wasn’t just the children she was concerned for, remember – there was the fate of her mother to take into consideration, as well.

‘Don’t be so pessimistic!’ I replied confidently. ‘This was our one piece of bad luck. Now we can look forward to our holiday, confident in the knowledge that we’ve already dealt with our disasters.’

Anyway – back to that first day - after squashing young Thomas through the only window we’d left open, we retrieved the house and car keys and were eventually on our way.

There were no other incidents en route to warn of what was to come – in fact, the flight to Paris was relatively pleasant (as far as twenty-four hours of medieval torture can be). The movies on offer were particularly appealing – the only drawback being that I foolishly forced myself to stay awake in order to watch them all. As the other passengers dozed and snored all around me, I was using matchsticks to keep my eyelids open. Unfortunately, I was so exhausted by the experience that I couldn’t remember a single detail afterwards. Months later when we ended up borrowing the DVDs, it was like seeing them for the first time.

Nevertheless, the issue for me was – and shall always remain – to make the most of free offers. Especially from airlines.

When I did finally get to sleep, Enid (who’d drawn the short straw and was sitting next to me) was kept awake for the remainder of the journey by my gentle, fairy-like snores. Such sensitivity to tiny noises did not hold her in good stead throughout the trip, although it has been suggested that the experience was perhaps a little worse than I’ve described.

The highlight for Lindy was when the cabin crew distributed the mini-Magnums. Her face lit up like a startled rabbit before the headlights, and her smile nearly split her face in two. Fortunately for me, she’s always been impressed by the simple things in life.

James and Thomas watched a few movies, pushed every meal about their plates suspiciously without tasting a crumb, and were only truly happy when the plane touched down at Charles de Gaulle and we were on terra firma once more. The Aged Relative and Son-in-Law embraced excitedly, and within a reasonably short time we’d collected our bags (Burke and Wills set off with less luggage than us!) and car, and were on the road.

We now confronted our first real challenge of the trip. I suppose I should mention at this point that Lindy was to do all the driving – we had a manual car, and I can only drive the wind-up kind (i.e., automatics). It was therefore very important that our journey on that first morning be as short and stress-free as possible. No one wants to drive much after a twenty-four hour plane trip (let’s face it, breathing in and out is almost too much to be bothered with), and we’d booked somewhere that was only about eighty kilometres from the airport.

Eighty kilometres.

This figure became a sort of numerical jinx throughout the trip. It’s probably some strange kind of dimension-warp thing, but every time we estimated that we were about eighty kilometres from somewhere, it ended up becoming a lot further – and I mean, a lot further!

On the morning in question it became two hundred kilometres.

I remember seeing the car’s mileage meter tick over the eighty kilometre mark, then looking out the window and feeling the tears stream down my face as I watched a plane landing at Charles de Gaulle airport, a couple of hundred metres away on our right.

Have you ever tried driving around Paris without using the ring-road (Peripherique)? That particular highway has a justifiably bad reputation, and I maintain to this day that it’s not a bad idea trying to avoid it when picking up an unfamiliar car after a twenty-four hour plane trip – especially if you’re still trying to get used to driving on the other side of the road! But, let me tell you, it beats the hell out of trying to negotiate your way around the poorly signed country roads of the Ile de France. I expect wartime Britain was much the same after they took down all the signs to confuse the invading Germans. I, for one, can guarantee that it’s terrifically effective. An invading army wouldn’t have stood a chance, and the Whittons-plus-one were like lambs to the slaughter.

The trip was so long that we were forced to stop for some refreshment. Enid craved a hot chocolate, and I was looking forward to my first cup of French coffee. Lindy needed a break, and the boys were happy just to have something to stick in their mouths.

First, let me go back a little to explain that we’d gone to great lengths before setting off to tell the boys that this holiday was going to be different – we weren’t going to be constantly stopping at McDonalds like we had in previous trips. In fact, we probably wouldn’t even stop there at all! Not once! In the entire trip!

Half an hour after landing in Paris we pulled into McDonalds for coffee and hot chocolate.

The thing with McDonald’s in Europe is that the few advantages it usually offers – quick service and the opportunity for a cheap, hot meal – have been stripped away. It took a good twenty minutes for our humble order to arrive, and it cost a bomb! My first coffee of the trip wasn’t worthy of the name.

Many hours later, we finally arrived at our destination, (after stopping at the wrong town and conducting a – not surprisingly - fruitless search for our hotel). I was able, at last, to advise the concierge – in word-perfect French - that we had a reservation. Six months of rehearsal had prepared me for this moment, and imagine the disappointment I felt when my speech was met with indifference. I suspect Olivier would have felt the same after hearing crickets in response to a masterful performance of Hamlet. To add to my humiliation, he did something I had never expected – he replied in French! In a mad panic, I responded with 'Comment?' – which (for those of you who don't know) is roughly the equivalent 'Huh?' in French. Unfortunately, this only encouraged the fool to spout more French. The torrent of incomprehensibility gushed again from his mouth. Totally lost on me, of course. I tried smiling helplessly and – believe it or not – it worked. 'Do you need help with your bags?' he asked – in English. I was shattered after only my first conversation. Well, I say conversation, but it was hardly that. A conversation requires a two-way dialogue. Once we'd switched to English, though, I was fine. Quite fluent, in fact. (Although Lindy would say that English is only my second language – drivel being my first). I could have chatted all afternoon if need be, but that wasn't the point. After a brief shake of the head to indicate that I could carry the bags myself (the thought that he might say something else in French – a distinct possibility, given that he was French - filled me with terror), I was directed up fourteen levels of staircases and along twenty miles of corridors to our rooms.

This being our first night, we were forced to endure this monumental trek accompanied by our entire collection of baggage. By level twelve I was beginning to regret my pride. It was intriguing the way the hotel seemed to stretch on forever on the inside, but from the outside it looked quite small. Just like Doctor Who’s Tardis. Another one of those dimension-warp things, I guess.

Eventually, after ensuring the madams were comfortably secure in their own room, the boys and I collapsed on our beds and began to doze. Just as blissful sleep descended upon us, we were awakened by the sound of foreign syllables (presumably French) being bellowed from a public address system outside our window. For a moment I had a vision of the Concierge standing below and attempting to carry on our earlier conversation, but soon realised it was coming from further away. The boys and I exchanged bewildered looks, and eventually summoned the strength to get out of bed and take a look.

At first I thought I must have been dreaming. It seemed like the entire town had assembled on the banks across the river and were fighting each other with wooden swords, while the woman on the PA tried futilely to somehow choreograph the mayhem. We watched with a mixture of amazement and horror, until it suddenly dawned on me that they were rehearsing for one of those son-et-lumiere productions that every town in France seems to put on for visitors over summer. This particular entertainment seemed to be recreating some long forgotten battle. From what we saw that afternoon, the battle of Moret-sur-Loing was one of the silliest in history!

In fairness, I suppose the fiasco would have looked more impressive if they’d been decked out in their period costumes – but it was difficult to suspend my disbelief when they were dressed in jeans, t-shirts and runners. James and