Arriving in France - August 29, 2024
Getting to France is a trip
I had been looking forward to finally getting back to France for months. The planning is part of the fun, of course, because you can do it from the comfort of home. Dreaming about all the places you’ll go and the things you’ll see is creative, exciting and basically doesn’t cost a penny.
In my last post I wrote about how excited I was to finally travel back to the part of France I was most familiar with, which are the Languedoc and Provence regions. So this post is about that specific journey - leaving San Francisco’s SFO airport from the International Terminal via Air France at 3pm on the afternoon of August 28, 2024.
I’m putting the lessons I learned at the end of this long post - so if you want to skip to the learning - scroll down now.
Travel is generally tough - it’s boring and can be uncomfortable. Let’s face it, sitting for ten hours on a flight from SFO to CDG is not my favorite way to spend the day, no matter what class of seats you pick. So I like to fly overnight, hopefully sleep at bit, and arrive in the morning hours in Paris excited enough to stay awake.
In the past, I would stay in Paris for a couple of days to enjoy the city and let jet-lag do it’s thing: up too early, walking the streets alone before humans were up. This trip, however, I was too excited about my mission of going to the South of France to begin the search for a home we could co-own. At the least, I wanted to find out what the real estate market was like since I had never gone there with my real estate hat on.
My plan was to take the “Train à grande vitesse” (TGV), or “high-speed train” directly from the CDG airport to the Gare d'Avignon TGV station (Terminal 2 downstairs) - a trip (four trains a day) of normally just over three hours - where I could rent a car and drive NW about 35 minutes to Uzes. That’s where I wanted to begin my (ad)venture. I had taken that direct train and rented a car there several times over the years.
I discovered that my airplane arrival around 10:15am put me on a TGV train at noon with one stop in Valence, where I would transfer to another TGV going to Avignon 15 minutes later. That would be just over four hours instead of three but there were no direct speed trains to Avignon mid-day so I booked that two-ticket TGV journey.
My direct flight on Air France was in coach and one of the few empty seats on the flight was the window seat of my row. The Frenchman who was in the middle seat was laughing about how lucky we would be if that seat remained empty so he could move over … and that’s what happened. The doors closed and we celebrated a small victory.
That Frenchman, Gerrard, was friendly and had been visiting his wife, who was at a seminar up in Sonoma county near my cabin. We enjoyed some small talk before settling in for our personal method of tolerating the ten hours of cramped conditions. During this flight, I just couldn’t sleep, so I watched a movie about apes taking over the planet, read a few more pages in a book about Paris, and walked around a bit.
The flight arrived on time and Gerrard offered to walk with me down to the TGV station at the airport. I had asked him directions and mentioned that I had never taken the TGV directly from my arrival gate. He had over an hour’s wait, so he volunteered to walk me down to the station; he was such a nice guy!
So here’s where things go off the rails, pardon the pun.
Once through security and downstairs at the train station, I discovered that my TGV to Valence was over 45 minutes late, which meant that I would miss my second leg train to Avignon. The station agent for inOui, the speed train operator, said to just tell the agent in Valence about my delay so I wouldn’t have to buy another ticket and they would get me to Avignon, no problem.
That nice plan didn’t work at all. Instead, the Valence agent told me I had to buy a new ticket. Not only that, but this would be for a normal train going first to Nice and then to Avignon with multiple stops in between rolling slowly near those stops at about 5 miles an hour. Even with that I had lost only a couple of hours so I basically settled into the first class train seat and enjoyed the scenery. First class, btw, on the train is not much more than the 2nd class tickets.
What I didn’t know - learning can be tough! - was that this ‘train to Avignon’ was taking me to the OTHER train station there. I realized I was 2 miles away from where my rental car was located and already late once I got off the train in Avignon Centre.
The agents at the Centre station were very helpful and got me on another train for 2 more euros, which delivered me to the Avignon TGV station in about 15 minutes. The rental car guy, however, said that I because was late, he would have to ‘see if I have any cars for you.’ He did, but a smaller, compact Renault rather than the midsized Peugeot I ordered. Life can be tough!
Next up: my AT&T ‘International Plan’ for $12 a day while in France did not work, of course. So I was about to drive to Uzes without GPS or any knowledge of how to get there. The Alamo rental car agent said they no longer had maps … so I went back up the stairs to the TGV station to ask for a map. The service people all looked at me like I was crazy. I might just as well have asked for an 8-track tape player installed in my little car.
I called AT&T to complain about the lack of service (no wifi) and the very kind agent said that happens sometimes (probably all the time). She explained that AT&T has to negotiate service in France (or any country) with local carriers and sometimes their range fails when you’re moving around and some carriers refuse to cooperate or don’t provide reliable service.
The agent talked me through the steps on my phone to allow for roaming so I could find a cooperative wifi service, but I had to turn my iPhone off to get the system to shift to another roaming option. She asked if I had any friends there with me so she could call them and use their phone to talk me through the steps while my iPhone was turned off. I said “I have no friends” in a rather frustrated voice and she quickly offered to search for other options for poor me.
All of this was happening while I was trying to negotiate for my rental car from Alamo. Since I was two hours late for pick up - a serious failure - that allowed them to abandoned me or at least threaten to do so.
I hate people who are on their cell phones in a grocery line. So you can imagine the good impression I was making on my phone with AT&T while talking in English with a visibly bothered French Alamo salesman.
The end of this pretty typical travelog story was that I got my rental car and my GPS roaming service worked for a few miles before it failed again, but it got me headed in the right direction and signs to Uzes began to appear on the roundabouts. After all of this, I was only about three hours late for a rendezvous there with my new associate, Pierre. A bottle of wine and dinner at Terrior on the Place des Herbes in Uzes was delicious and calming. After being in the same clothes for about 24 hours, I wanted to burn them, but what a trip!
Lessons learned?
That the fewer legs on the journey, the less risk
That there are two train stations in Avignon
If trains are less than an hour late, the train company is not required to refund your lost ticket (I had plenty of time to read their rules)
That AT&T International Plan is spotty and not easy to manage; local friends suggested a temporary cell phone with a new number was cheaper and better
That French people can be nice or not depending on how you greet them
That all but a couple of restaurants in Uzes don’t begin service until 7pm, so no rush; most begin 5pm bar service (‘just have a drink’ was a common response)
If you are late to pick up your rental car, all bets are off on the rental company providing you with a car and the Avignon offices close at 9pm