Europe travels

On our way to Rivel

After seeing all the great and beautiful sites that Paris had to give us it was finally time to make our way to the cozy little house that we are to be renting in Rivel. So we went to the storing room full of our luggage in the hotel and grabbed all of our stuff. We got all our heavy packs all arranged onto our backs and slowly walked out the doors onto the streets by the train station; it was really obvious that we were tourists. We were just about to walk across the busy street when we realized that we had forgotten two of our most important bags. So dad walked back into the hotel and got the bag full of my school books and work, and the other bag full of our camping supplies. We had to get to the airport in time so that we could rent our car at the car rent store near the airport so we were all kind off frantic to get there before it closed. When we were at the metro there was a major confusion with the metros. Since there were so many strikes going on we couldn’t take a train directly to the airport. After a while of standing there figuring out where to go, we ended up following a man who told us what the best way to go was. We followed him on a train then on a bus and sure enough we arrived at the airport. We called the guy at the car rental and he picked us up.

Fiona and I waited outside while dad signed the papers for our car. After he was finished that we all jammed our bags into the back of it and finally left the massive city. Since we wanted to arrive at our house on the 23 of September we had six days of driving.The first night of our big trek we decided that we were too tired to camp so we ended up staying at First Class. The name of this hotel did not suit it at all because it was not first class at all. When we entered our room what we saw was a double bed (barely), a bed above the double which was attached to the wall (that was the bed Fiona and I had to share) , and a miniature bathroom.

After a crappy night of sleep we were back on the road.

The next night we were camped at a nice campsite in the Loire valley. Our tent was overlooking the wide river.

Once we had had a nice muddy walk along the riverbed we walked across the bridge which led into the town. We walked around for a while looking for restaurants, but realizing quickly afterwards that none of the restaurants in that town opened up till seven. So we then walked along a nice little path that was beside a pretty little creek.

When we got back in the town we went into a Chinese restaurant. Turns out that the food was not good at all and it was really expensive. We walked back in the dark to our campsite and had a good sleep in our tent.

We stayed at a campsite by the ocean the next night and in the morning once again we were back on the road driving and driving. After another full day of staying on the road we pulled into a quiet little town called Blaye and set up our tent in an old Citadel.

We had an amazing dinner while we looked over the Gironde River.

Then we walked back to the Citadel and got into bed it was kind of hard to sleep at first because there was a really crazy lady who lived in the Citadel, and she wouldn’t stop screaming! When we woke up we ate the usual breakfast of boiled eggs, yogurt, bread and jam, and muesli. Then we went to the morning market to get our lunch supplies for later in the day.Later that night we were starting to get desperate looking for a campground. Every campground we went to was closed for the season! So we then went back to a town called Bonnefont and went to the campground that we saw there. Unfortunately the campsite was also closed for the season. Just before we were about to leave though, a man came up to us and we asked him if we could stay the night but he said no, he also said that he didn’t speak French that well but he spoke Dutch and German so then my mom starting speaking in German to him. After their little conversation he quickly changed his mind and let us stay the night there. It was a really cool campsite it was located right on a farm. While we were eating dinner we were surrounded by sheep, kittens, and chickens.

The next day we left the awesome of campsite and after six long days of constant driving we finally arrived in Rivel at 11:30. We met the lady named Cathy who was in charge our house, we found out that our house wasn’t ready yet so we went out for lunch while she finished. We had lunch at an amazing place called Restaurant de Moulin.

After lunch we headed back to Rivel dumped all our stuff in the magnificent house and decided to go to Chalabre (The nice town that was close to Rivel). Once we got at Chalabre we got our dinner at a little grocery store. After we got all the food we needed we wandered around to get a feel for the place and then went back to our new home.