Don't Leave Home Without It

View of the Cher River from Inside the Castle

This is part two of last weekend’s story. As you will recall, we were headed to a castle on Saturday, when my traveling companion got sick. So we cancelled, but she was better on Sunday and we decided to head out to Chenonceau, widely accepted as one of the best castles in France. I was intrigued by it because it is built across a river.

Our trip started off well. After making only one minor wrong turn, we were on the French equivalent of a freeway. This one is a toll road and like some toll roads in the U.S., you take a printed ticket when you enter the road and when you exit you pay a rate based upon where you entered. With efficiency, I marveled at, you did not even have to pay and get a new ticket when you changed from one toll road to another. After a pleasant couple of hours with much beautiful scenery, we were ready to exit the freeway, only a few miles from the castle.

Then trouble started. We inadvertently began in a lane that was not staffed. When we realized it was an automatic lane, we thought we needed a special card so we had to move lanes. There was not much traffic and moving to another lane was fairly uneventfull. We selected a lane that had a booth for an acutal person. After waiting acouple of minutes we realized that this booth was not staffed.

We would have to pay the machine. How hard could it be? After I put the ticket in, the machine indicated that we needed to pay 10 euros 10. Great! The navigator gave me one of her credit cards. The machine rejected it. She gave me another, the machine rejected it. No problem, I thought, I’ll just use my Visa.

I inserted my Visa, but the machine was saying it needed my ticket. When it said this, I thought I had seen the ticket pop back out of the machine. So I opened the door and looked for the ticket but couldn’t see it and couldn’t get out because I was too close to the toll booth. The navigator got out and tried to look for the ticket. I backed up, but to no avail we could not find a ticket. The navigator kept insisting that the ticket was still in the machine. At this point no one was yet behind us. We were starting to freak out a bit, but we had it together enough to put our hazard lights on.

At this point, we knew we needed help. So I pushed the help button. By the time, the person answered we had about five cars behind us. I was ready to get out of there so the first time since I’ve been here I was willing to go the English route. I said, “Parlez-vous Anglaise?” In response I received an emphatic, “No.” Where were all those people who wanted to speak English with me when I wanted to speak French?

It was clear, I needed to use French. Somehow I managed to explain that the machine wanted a ticket but I’d already put the ticket in the machine. Although I couldn’t understand all of her response, I heard something about perdu, which I knew meant lost, and a charge of 55 euros popped up on the machine. In very definate French, I said my ticket was not lost, it was in the machine. She responded, but I had no idea what she said. I knew that if I wasn’t going to be charged the 55 euros, I had to convince her of what I should be charged. So I told her we got on the road in Bourges. That seemed to do the trick and the machine displayed a chare of 10 euros.

I put my Visa back in the machine and it came out. I told her the machine wouldn’t take my card. She again said something that seemed like a different card was needed. We had tried Australian Visa, Australian Master Card and American Visa. Since the machine did not take cash, I had only one option left. American Express, I said. She said okay.

By the time, I could put the American Express card in the machine, the charge had disappeared and it was again asking for my ticket. And what was worse, the help lady was gone. On the positive side, all the cars behind us were also gone theire drivers having realized that backing up and going to another lane to pay was a better option than waiting on us. But amazlingly, when I pushed the button, the same person appeared and she quickly made the 10 euros reappear.

Garden Cottage at Castle

I put my American Express card in, it popped out and the bar blocking my progress for the last 20 minutes or so raised to allow us to exit. In my excitement, I promptly killed the car. (Remember this is the first time I have driven stick shift in 20 years.) And by now a car was behind us, with a driver acting irritated. For him, I had no sympathy. If you pull in behind a car with hazard lights on, you should not be surprised that they are not moving. In any case, I quickly started the car and we were on our way for a lovely afternoon at a beautiful castle with gorgeous views and gardens. The pictures don’t do it justice but do give you an idea. You can see why it was worth the hassle to see.

And from now on, I am a true believer in the American Express slogan, “Don’t Leave Home Without It!” I never will. Of course, I may also never rent a car in a foreign country.