Exit Paris (Wednesday 10th July 2013)

Tonight we are in Dijon!. Why Dijon? It's a town we recognised, having no idea where we were going after we took the keys of the Clio.

We dropped by the Louvre on the way to the Renault Eurodrive office. As you are all aware, the Louvre is an absolutely massive museum. One would need two or three days to take it all in. In three hours we saw parts of the Denon wing, one section of the Richelieu wing and none of the Sully wing. We all particularly enjoyed the Islam exhibition. I think I've seen enough Italian Renaissance art to last for a while. And we haven't even reached Italy yet!

 

It was a real shame to have to leave after such a short time, but the was a Renault to drive! We picked up our bags from the Concierge at the Meslay Republique and headed for the Metro. We caused a bit of trouble on the crowded Metro with all our bags, made worse when three American girls jumped on with theirs a couple of stops later. But the locals were very understanding and even helpful. We alighted at Point de St. Cloud and headed to the Renault dealer. The whole process to take delivery of the car was surprisingly quick and trouble-free. Two signatures and one passport later I had the keys in my hand and was being shown the car. We have a noir (black) Renault Clio Gen-4. Bewdiful!!!!!

We he aded off down the A6 in the direction of Lyon. The traffic was pretty bad for the first 30kms or so but then it opened up and we were able to push the Clio up to the legal limit of 130kph. Ok, I might have gone over that from time to time, but only in the interests of safety!

We arrived in Dijon at about 7pm under the navigational guidance of Emily, Kerry's Samsung tablet and the CoPilot app thereon. I had downloaded the map set of all of Europe before we left so all that was required was a GPS signal – no data downloads via 3G. We'll workout the Clio's GPS tomorrow.

Emily directed us the the Ibis hotel in South Dijon. Somewhat in the industrial area but a very modern, clean and reasonably priced place. The room cost is about the came we would pay in any motel in Victoria. That's our benchmark. We ate at the hotel which also well priced and excellent in quality.

Tonight we had cause for a special celebration so I ordered a bottle of champagne . Well, not really champagne, but the local sparkling, dry white wine. Even the French can't call it champagne if it's not from that region! During dinner Emily logged into her Melbourne Uni portal to get her results from Semester 1. She was one mark short of scoring 4 out of 4 H1's, including an amazing 91 for the American Politics subject. Worth the cost of a bottle of champagne any day, especially while in France.

Tomorrow we'll head towards Monaco and Nice, stop somewhere nearby and spend Friday with all the beautiful people on the Cote de Azur.