So, for Christina's spring vacation, after much deliberation and number crunching, we decided that the least expensive and most fun idea would be to rent a car and drive around Aveyron (the district (county) in France where Millau is, and of which Rodez is the "county seat"). There is a ton to see here, including Roquefort, the home of the very pungent cheese of the same name, and much of it can't be seen by bus or train. The first day we saw a famous boat shaped chateau (castle) and then went dolmen hunting. The second day we drove to the Lakes then went to Chateau le Brousse, which is an old castle in a small village. Driving around the countryside has been amazing, especially in springtime here, everything here is so green and lovely. It is a rolling hill kind of place, with vast fields divided by old stone fences, lines of trees, and some kind of low bushes. We have also seen a lot of livestock over the last five days, and while this is something that we have a lot of at home (across the street in Billings for me) it's still cool to see so much of the local life. We went to Albi on Monday, which is actually just on the other side of the Aveyron border in the Tarn district. The river Tarn runs through Millau and into Albi, and the city itself is very pretty. We had a nice walk along the river there, a city of bridges, and saw a giant Cather church in the center. The church wasn't open to go inside, but as I have said, and heard said many times before,including on the steps of this cathedral, you've seen one cathedral you've seen them all. This sounds cynical, but it doesn't take many magnificent cathedrals for this to be true. Each is amazing in it's own right, and they quickly become redundant; we found out that this is also true for castles.
That aside, we have seen a ton of countryside and taken hundreds of pictures. Today, after filling the tank of the super-SuperU car, we drove to Le Coutreveraude (something like this), another castle, and had a look around. It was free to walk around, besides the €2 it would cost to get back out of the parking lot. The castle is actually part of a fortified city that now houses many little shops and boasts some great views of the countryside. Though rainy, we enjoyed wandering around there for a couple of hours, but were ready to go when we were done, because as aforementioned; it was raining. It was at this point that our previously unmentioned fears about having put the wrong gas in the car were proven correct. In France, green is for unleaded and Diesel is also called Gazoil. We had filled our almost empty tank with Unleaded by mistake, and were suddenly stranded at the castle, in the middle of rural France and no phone book.
Christina talked to some road workers nearby who called a garage for us, and pretty soon we were in the front seat of a tow truck with the SuperU car safely strapped on back. A couple pastis and hours later, not to mention the €130 we "had to pay to fix our mistake," and we were on the road again. On the upside, we didn`t have to pay the 2 euro parking fee.
After my fun Russia experiences Mindy told me that it is not a trip unless you visit the police station just once. Well, already having done that, my French trip has been marked instead with a mechanic`s garage. Due to unexpected expenses we had to cut our car vacation a little short, but we still saw a ton of Aveyron, and in the end it was much cheaper then anything else we could have done; though double what we were expecting thanks to our guesswork. The moral of the story is, use your French English dictionary.
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