So, suffice to say our departure from Paris was less than comfortable, and after a couple of false starts and an awkward attempt in French to request access to a locked outside bathroom at a petrol station (Non, non, non, c’est fermer!), we found a public bathroom to empty at; the less said about that experience, the better.

Able to breathe again, we continued on down the motorway. We stopped for lunch at a little town along the way, all narrow lanes with very old-looking buildings, surrounded by farmland. After lunch, once the shops had re-opened, we walked down to the boulangerie (bakery) to get a baguette and same bread, and had a very satisfying French language encounter with the lovely woman working the counter.

Onwards, regretfully taking the toll roads as we were in a hurry, and the alternative non-toll route would’ve been nearly double the time, an extra 7 hours driving over a couple of days, and not feasible. We slept the night in a quite lovely aire just off the motorway, and pressed onwards the next day.

Stopped in a lay-by with a petrol station, restaurant and supermarket, and I made a rather elaborate dal for lunch that turned out to be awesome. We stopped at a McDonalds to work through our separate to-do lists using their wifi (from Nettle, parked outside), each of which was very, very long. Four exhausting hours later, we were hungry and very ready to stop for the night, but we had to drive for quite a while before we found anywhere to park — a rather charmless petrol station/diner lay-by, but it didn’t matter!

Another day, another novel bathroom experience — the toilets in the rest stops here are just trays with two slightly raised treads to squat on. Unfortunately, however, the moment one attempts said squat, the flush sensor at the back of the stall is triggered and water (in the best case scenario) splashes over your feet — unless you jump out of the way first. I had repeated this careful lowering followed by a leap out of the way of the torrent several times before I gave up. There must be some trick to it, but I don’t know what it is!

We filled up with water (a rather frustrating bit of communication to determine whether the petrol station’s tap had drinkable water), did some hand-washing of laundry, then headed onwards. A few hours later, with the scenery getting ever-prettier, we caught a flash of blue through the trees beside the motorway — it was a turquoise-coloured lake, Lac d’Aiguebelette in the Massif region. We left the motorway and took a closer look on foot. When the sun shone, the blue of the lake was breathtaking.

A little further down the motorway, we started seeing mountains on the horizon, then we were in the Alps! Breathtakingly enormous mountains, often with beautiful little villages tucked into the sides, or perched atop outcrops.

Then before we know it, while passing through a long tunnel that, incidentally, cost us about $70 to in tolls to pass through, we passed a tiny blue sign with a ring of stars on it and the word “Italia” — we were in Italy!

Things got rapidly less attractive, unfortunately, as we headed through Torino, and after many hours of hoping to find somewhere to stop for the night, we settled for another car park in a service area beside the motorway.

The next day, we drove on, fuelled up, and then caught our first view of the coast, from a part of the motorway high on the mountains above the sea, crossing a high bridge and moving on into towns packed to the gills with ochre-coloured high-rise apartments. Quite spectacular, in an icky way. The motorway wove through this landscape, sweeping over and under other lesser roads, like a huge roller-coaster.

Finally, Nigel told us to take an exit, and we passed through the final toll booth (about AU$270 of tolls all up!) and onto extremely windy roads switchbacking down steep mountainsides above azure sea, into villages of B&Bs, ramshackle buildings, bicycles, grape vines and decrepit farm machinery. We had arrived.

I’m amazed that telcos are allowed to use the word ‘unlimited’ (or rather, illimité), when the quotas behind the scenes are not only present, but so restrictive. Where are the consumer protection organisations in all this?

I hear that a French address may be required to buy a PAYG sim card, at least with Orange, and possibly with other carriers. Not sure how to get around that one — some people (like this person) have bought SIM cards on eBay.fr first.

I think Auchan have the least worst option, although it is quite poor. Anyway, the options, such as they are:

Auchan

Auchan offer a mobile internet service, sans engagement: €20 for the SIM card including 5 hrs use/250 Mb) or €30 for a modem too (2 hrs/250 Mb included), then €30 gets you a month of access with a 2 GB quota.

It is unclear on whether VoIP is allowed: There is a notice saying it is prohibited underneath the hourly recharge options (presumably including the time included with the starter kits), but nothing underneath the monthly options. This may be careless copywriting, or VoIP may actually be allowed with the monthly options.

The monthly options are described as ‘un compte bloqué’ (a locked account), which may mean they’re only available when you buy the locked modem. I’m awaiting clarification from their sales team.

Orange

Orange offer pre-paid mobile broadband, but the available offers are appalling. Orange limit use by time, and the most one can buy is 4 hours for — wait for it — €20. Ouch.

The only other option I could find is to get a ‘Mobicarte‘ SIM card for €15, then equip it with the ‘Internet Max‘ option which for €12/month gets you “unlimited” Internet access which is really a 500 Mb quota (shaped after), with no email included (they presumably do deep packet inspection, identifying IMAP/POP/SMTP traffic and charging it separately), VoIP prohibited, and use on a computer (with a modem) prohibited. Unlimited indeed. While they offer a slightly less horrendous offer to iPhone users, it apparently isn’t available to Mobicarte customers.

SFR

SFR have an ‘SFR La Carte‘ offer, €15 for a SIM card, then customers with an iPhone can recharge with an option which gives ‘unlimited’ Internet access for a certain number of days, e.g. 20 days for €20. The small print says what you actually get is 500 Mb quota (shaped after), no VoIP or modem/computer use.

The only other option with SFR is their Pass Internet 3G+ which, like Orange, offers time-limited ‘passes’, at outrageous prices: €26 for 8 hours, €40 for 15 hours. Wow. This may also require you to buy a modem from them.

Bouygues

Bouygues offer a pre-paid SIM card for €15, then you can select an internet access offer which costs €2 per day for 10 Mb, and €8 for the day if you exceed 10 Mb (lasts until midnight). VoIP and modem use aren’t allowed.

Local broadband countries

Searching for water, I spotted a hose at a tiny petrol station, and managed to stumble my way through a negotiation in French with the attendant to fill up our water tank. He only agreed after I offered to pay (je peux vous payer?), and the venture succeeded right up to the point when, after he filled our tank, I accidentally offered five euros for the water instead of about two, forgetting to convert currently while distracted trying to carry out the conversation in French. Merde!

It’s frustrating that while I feel able to put most things into a sentence in French, possibly with the help of my dictionary, once I’m face-to-face with someone, even if I’m prepared, my IQ seems to drop about fifty points and I become a gibbering moron, stuttering over the most simple French sentences. Hopefully this will get easier with time and practice!

Anyway, not wishing to tackle the infamous Parisian traffic during peak hour, we thought we’d stop at the next lay-by and wait it out. Said lay-by never came, and we found ourselves swept onto the motorway heading into Paris. Fairly typical move for us, really!

So, our introduction to le circulation de Paris was a rather exciting experience, particularly when we came across some rather unfamiliar and fluid traffic layouts. Still, with no major incidents, Nigel faithfully led us to the aire de stationnement in front of the magnificent Château de Vincennes: A spacious car park with plenty of space, and many other motorhomes parked up. We took a walk in the adjacent and very pretty parc de floral, dropped into the nearby metro station to check up on the plan for the following morning (damn, the metro in Paris is unbelievably expensive! About $32 AUD for a day pass!), and settled in for the night.

Up early the next day, and we headed to the metro to meet our friend Tiff coming in on the train from London for the weekend. Hooray! We spent the day with Tiff walking through Paris, from la Place de la Concorde, along the Seine, and past the Eiffel Tower — which is one impressively massive construction, by the way — dodging dodgy street hawkers trying to thrust crappy miniature Eiffel Towers in our hands and chanting one-euro, one-euro. We visited Sacré Coeur (dodging pushy guys trying to put ‘friendship bracelets’ on the girls’ wrists), a quite beautiful church, all rounded dome roofs and intricate statuary, perched on top of a grassy hill overlooking Paris. Eventually, footsore, back again to Nettle to sit around and have some cider.

Meanwhile, we had been trying for days to find a way to get in contact with Tim, Jen and Annie, other friends who were also in the country. The solution was presented by Tiff, her working mobile phone, which we used to form a plan to meet at the Eiffel Tower at 9. This fell through and we rescheduled for breakfast, but at least we had a communication channel.

At dusk, we took the metro in to the Eiffel Tower again, a very pretty sight after dark, and took the lift up one of its legs to the mid level (the top was closed!) to take in the view.

The three of us awoke the next day and went to meet Tim, Jen and Annie at the Châtelet station. We were all 10 minutes late, and so ran right into each other at one of the exits, luckily. A rather expensive and sadly underwhelming breakfast at the first café we came to (although croissants are always good), then we split up, me with TJ&A and Katherine with Tiff to do some shopping.

The four of us walked along the Seine, through the Louvre buildings and la Place de la Concorde to Museé d’Orsay, the art museum. Jen and Annie raced off and had finished seeing the whole place before Tim and I managed to do much of the bottom floor, so they went off for lunch while we hurried through the rest. Some very impressive pieces there, including a lot of Monet’s work, and some of Van Gough’s; Starry Night and his self-portrait, among others. Both Timmy and I found ourselves drawn to some others’ work, including lots of great pointillism stuff from Camille Pissarro. I wished I had more education in art history so I could appreciate and understand what I was seeing more. I at least need to come back with Katherine some time, who at least knows what pointillism is!

We finished up rapidly (“love it, love it, like it, don’t get it, brilliant, love it…“), and joined the girls for lunch. Very entertaining and friendly café staff. I had about twenty different kinds of cheese melted on a piece of toast with lettuce on the side. Tasty stuff.

Having found ourselves running out of day, we cancelled our prior plans to see the catacombs and visited the sewers instead (as you do) — a museum inside a public section of the underground sewer system: Smelly stuff. Grey water running about two metres down under a grill making up the walkway! A little disappointing though, not quite what we expected — just a lot of in-some-year-such-and-such-did-something-or-other. Oh, well. We finished up in the park by the Eiffel Tower, lounging on the grass. Brilliant to spend time with them.

I bid farewell to Tim, Jen and Annie, who we were to meet in a few days in Cinque Terre, Italy (we arranged a time and a place to meet there), and headed to Gare-du-Nord station to say goodbye to Tiff as well. A sad farewell, given that Tiff was off back to Australia soon, and we probably wouldn’t see her again for many a year.

Reunited with Katherine (who I had missed terribly during the day!); We called it a night.

Our final morning in Paris we spent in a McDonalds near Châtelet trying to make the wifi work well enough to look up a place to buy second-hand bikes. No workies (plus, they seem to block SMTP traffic, so it’s impossible to send email unless it’s through a web client), and much frustration later we headed onwards and walked through the Louvre buildings, up the Champs Elysees and to the Arc De Triomphe. Many displays of wealth; expensive restaurants, designer labels, showrooms of car prototypes, bizarre to see contrasted with beggars in the street, kneeling down holding cups.

So, the next morning we left Paris — for now, we’ll be back — for Cinque Terre in Italy, to meet Tim, Jen and Annie there.

I jumped out, walked into reception, and got as far as asking if they had any space for us for tonight and being asked for…something…before I flaked out and reverted to English. We topped up our water successfully, took a walk through Calais, and stayed the night.

The next morning we bought deux croissants, s’il vous plaît from a nearby bakery and heated ‘em up with the frying pan. We left the municipal caravan park and found a car park near the harbour amongst a horde of other motorhomes. The car park in question had a sign at the entrance that (presumably) said parking was for motorhomes and trucks only — a very good omen for us.

The motorhome beside us was occupied by a French family with a gorgeous little girl with curly white blonde locks who was playing with a dog outside. We were just commenting to each other on how cute she was when she started kicking the dog and stepping on it’s paws! What a little asshole!

I had an unsuccessful attempt to obtain either an iPhone 3GS or just a mobile broadband account/SIM card at the local Orange shop. While the French speaking went relatively well, and the comprehension too (with a lot of help from facial expressions and gestures), the French bureaucracy didn’t — you just can’t get a SIM card without a French address, and possibly some other things. That puts a spanner in the works.

We visited the supermarché — found a bottle of wine that turned out to be quite drinkable for €2.50, and held up the check-out while I ran back to weigh the vegetables, which you’re meant to do yourself — then drove onwards (on the right, on the right).

We headed towards the Somme region, and parked beside the road surrounded by fields, up against the edge of a lay-by. A very disturbed sleep, punctuated by passing vehicles beeping their horns in the night. Still not sure what their problem was, but presumably we broke some etiquette or other. Seemed more than a little petty through!

The next day we spent visiting Australian war memorials and reading about the Great War. The memorial to the 1st Australian Division, ‘Gibraltar’, at Pozières, and the Australian memorial at Le Hamel, which had panels telling the story of the victory there, led by General John Monash. Odd being educated about such things in this place.

We found a place to park for the night in a village near Le Hamel, beside a lake, and had a successful exchange in French with the gentleman who lived beside where we were parked, making sure it was okay that we stayed there (‘pas de problème!’).

Had cider while dusk settled around us, ducks and geese making dusk noises.

The next morning, after a couple-hour stop in a McDonalds car park to use their wifi, we visited the Australian National memorial at Villers-Bretonneux. Rows and rows of white headstones, some with names and regiments (Australian, Canadian, American, British…) but poignantly, many without names, and many without names or even regiments.

The walls of the monument carry thousands of names of missing soldiers, a confronting sight with so much more impact than statistics can carry.

The interior of the memorial’s tower carries a transcript of a speech by Paul Keating, in French and English, an unexpectedly moving tribute to those that gave their lives in the war. But with the most impact for me were the scars on the monument itself, left there by the Second World War, just a couple of decades later. We found the concept baffling: Another ugly outbreak of violence on an incomprehensible scale, within the lifetimes of those who lived through the last. I doubt I’ll ever understand it.