We leave our apartment at 7.30am. It’s a rather arduous trip to pick up our car on the northern outskirts of Paris. Down our 91 stairs with our luggage for the last time, up and down many flights of stairs at various ‘gare’, metro stations and we finally catch two trains to Rue De Villiares and the Citroen dealer.
We are picking up our brand new C3 that we are leasing for the rest of the Europe trip. We are impressed with the service and whole concept of leasing rather than hiring a car. We can drop the car off in Frankfurt and in the deal they provided us with a nights accommodation near the airport and paid the costs of getting the car back to Paris, all this cheaper than hiring. Insurance with no excess (even if we write the car off and they will provide another one) is included. We do have to make sure the car has its first no charge service at any curie dealer. Citroen will find it much easier apparently to sell the car as a demonstrator, without the obviously huge new car sales tax on it, something that new car buyers also want to avoid.
Leaving Paris was interesting, not difficult even driving on the other side of the road except for the roundabouts. They have to be experienced to be believed. Lanes lead onto the roundabouts but after that it’s every man for himself. If four cars can fit across what would normally be two lanes then so be it. Picture dodgem cars and you come close! Watching people park in Paris is also hilarious! Drivers will pull up to the car in front, hit it and back of an inch. I asked a sister at the meeting about this and she said you have to keep bumping the car back and front to get out. They believe bumper bars are just that and as you can imagine they are well ‘massaged’. It was awesome to get into the French countryside south of Paris. It is a buffet for the eyes. We took the ‘off motorway’ route through little, ancient villages and ploughed fields as far as the eye could see, south to Burgundy.
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