Armagnac - 1st Day

Just a long drive. . . picked up the car at 8:00, ready just as promised . . .zoomed home for our pre-packed items . . . then zoomed out of PRG to the unctious imperiousness of the TomTom . . .our first confrontation with Ms TomTom came when I spontaneously exited the freeway in order to hit the Starbucks at Zlicin . . . "turn around when you can" she implored as I circled the parking lot. Her disappointment could not match ours however when we discovered that Starbucks does not start serving until 9:30 . . . we settled for MickeyDs, hit the road, and cranked up the volume on our CDs . . . we'd put Plzen in our TomTom, just to get out of town . . .as we bypassed Plzen, Mrs tried to reset it to a destination in Deutschland . . . it wouldn't recognize any towns . . . (Drat! we reckoned . . . the TomTom is stuck in CZ) . . . unplugged and unloved it went back into its zippered compartment. . . I had another map I'd printed over the internet . . . it was all autobahn to Toulouse, we thought . . .

Amazing how little one sees from the autobahn . . . the only observation we might have made was the juvenile tittering at all the signs for Ausfahrt . . . 8^D . . . an occasional schloss, depressing petrol stations that make american roadside establishments seem downright bucolic . . .we drove between 110 & 130 kph, like everybody else, stopping only twice to refill . . . the first time we ate at a burgerking, paying enough in euros to buy a franchise, we felt . . .the second refill, we had munchies and celo-wrapped sandwiches, disgusting, true, but the restroom was free, instead of the first stop, where it was .50 euros . . . crikey . . .

once we crossed over into france, the autobahn was the same, but we paid almost 75 euros in tolls along the way . . . I guess this is one of the by-products of the socialist state . . . but eventually, we had to leave the superhiway and travel smaller roads to Toulouse . . . after one particularly confusing rotary, I told marilyn, "that TomTom sure would have been useful . . . " a tho't that stayed on our minds as it got dark and the interchanges got trickier . . . the main problem I had was that I didn't believe it would take 14 hours to get to Toulouse, as foretold, but that I could make time up . . . but as we turned west away from the road to Marseilles, Mrs said, "It's a lot further to Toulouse than to Marseilles!"

I was able to amuse myself for a while by ruminating upon the traffic warnings we frequently saw . . .

I got her to plug the TomTom back in, just to see if we could find out how long it would be . . . and it seemed to know where we were, even tho' it would not give us directions, so -- recklessly, I admit -- I took the TomTom from Mrs and poly-brachiated thru the menus until I got to new country displays. . . while I drove . . . then I shoved it back at her and told her to plug in Toulouse . . . from then on we were comforted by the countdown, at least 3 hours worth. . . when we got to Toulouse, we didn't find the hotel at city-centre, so we had to stop and put in the address: Wilson square (for Thomas Wilson, not Woodrow). When we got to the square tho' and circumnavigated twice without seeing the hotel, we branched out on the side streets, which was an iffy thing, given the one-wayness of those streets . . . eventually we called the hotel and the night man (it was 1:30 in the morning) came out to flag us down . . . the Holiday Inn was hidden behind a bistro, and had its lights out . . . how the F*** were we supposed to find it . . . plus we had to park 2 blocks away and hump our luggage . . .the room was nice enough and provided a tv with soft-core porn and english news . . . enuff to pre-occupy us while we power-sipped a bottle of wine and crashed. What was weird about Toulouse tho', was all the people milling around every street corner, every cafe, every bar, even so late . . . dang, what a party town . . .