As unrest grew in terminal 2 of Barcelona airport, I came up with the idea of renting a car, we had two capable drivers (hmm, my skills have been doubted and the other driver is American).
Ok first tried Hertz, no cars! Ok Europcar= 1500eur to hire a car because they would have to collect it and bring it back from France. Ooooooooooooooooh ISH!
This wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought and my bright idea seemed to be dimming with every new ray of sun the catalan clouds decided to permit through…now that we were meant to be leaving might I add.
Avis were not open and…“there are some other rentals outside," said a lady who had just dropped off a rental car and tip, "if someone brings back a car from France, it will be cheaper.” Thanks for the heads up lady I thought, two of us dashed outside and the hunt began, for almost an hour we went from rental to rental searching for a French car. Found one for over 400 eur, hmm, we can do better than that I thought as more cars arrived.
You see the whole of Europe was in turmoil and the most popular means of transport was a car. There were some important conferences happening in Barca that weekend so there was bound to be some cars coming in…. Cue lovely lady at Europcar, British too from Sussex but very much with an east London accent. She sorted us a nice 7-seater for the same price as a 5- seater meaning we could split the costs even further. Ok so we had found the car, now we just had to find people crazy enough to want to hop into the car with us. Ok crazy couple found. After 4 hours, half a cup of coffee some haribos and no sleep, we were finally on our way back to France. But nothing is ever as simple as it sounds, especially in Spanish and especially when you don’t like GPS’ and you don’t understand a word of Spanish. Well I really undertood the word Sangria the night before.
A trip to who knows where, direction Stiges???? and a return to the airport and finally we were on our way. The other two girls who were flying to London had decided to wait and see what they could do about their flights rather than go through the trouble of getting to Calais or Paris.
So here we were with an 8 hour drive in front of us, and the Pyrenees mountains either side of us although we were exhausted, we could all appreciate the beauty.
Our co- passengers were quite chatty and after a while I did want some silence, I was literally sleeping with my eyes open and they were disturbing that, I should have been thankful as they were a very lovely couple who lived in Paris with their two children.
We dropped them off in Narbonne, a beautiful French city on the French/Spanish border. We took some pictures on the bridge and bumped into the couple again at the McD toilets where we took a group photo and finally made our way back to Lyon, pitt stop Arles to drop off my Polish friend.
Lyon at 8pm and we were finally there, finally……we just had to fill up. As we turned in to fill up, we blew out sighs of relief as we really couldn’t believe that today had actually happened.
Lo got out to fill up but it was not working, she went to speak to the cashier who told her that she was at the pump for cards only. As she jumped back into the car started to reverse, I realised that the pump was still in the car, too late as I saw the petrol cover fly off the car (that’s going to be expensive I thought, who’s card is it on?).
I looked over at Lo, who looked like she was about to crumble, this long day was about to take it’s first victim. I looked at her, my other friend and laughed, well I didn’t want to cry, which was the other option. I couldn't stop and as they joined in I thanked God that we were safe, poor but safe.
We fixed it and filled up the petrol (fingers crossed no one needs to fill up for a while) and we should get away with it, as we drove off the cashier looked at us, I looked back thinking you don’t know the ‘alf of it mate.
Things I would have added or should
Anxious host dad and 50 calls
1 text from my host mum
Panicked host dad who wanted to take car
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