Three Ferries to Greece or Two Innocents Abroad In A Honda Accord

Saturday 11th November 2006

We had breakfast then headed for Troyes in the pouring rain.  We drove around the edge of town and eventually parked opposite the Cathedral in the car park.  We got a ticket from the machine which gave us 1 hour and 58 minutes for 2.80 euro.  At 11am a siren sounded and all the church bells began to sound which we thought was odd but thought nothing of it.  We found a fabulous food market with meat, fish and fruit and we spent time going around the stalls before emerging from the other entrance and heading towards the main town and medieval city.  We walked around streets of very old timber framed buildings with very few other people around.

Around 12.30pm we went back to the car to get another ticket and saw that ours was the only car with a ticket in the window.  When we looked at the ticket we discovered it was valid until Monday 13th.  It was at this point that Gerry remembered that November 11th is Armistice Day.  Using our school French we eventually read that you don't pay for car parking on special days and Sundays so we had wasted our money on the ticket!  We went to a traditional restaurant for lunch and Dave tried the "Andouillette" which turned out to be the local tripe sausages in what looked like a snot sauce.

After lunch we drove back to the hotel and got lost going out to Troyes but eventually found the right road and along the way stopped off at a massive Leclerc hypermarket which was full of cars in the car park and more people inside than products on the shelves.  We bought some cheese, bread and wine for an evening feast and returned to the hotel to get a good nights sleep and ready for the off the following morning.