Category: Travel

What I Did On My Summer Vacation 2008 Part Neuf – The Day I Saw A Corvair Greenbriar Van In Royan, By The Beach With The German Gun Emplacements

A quick walk down to Omaha Beach … seemingly, the British love RVs … what the landed gentry drive to the vacation house … “That engine sounds familiar,” I said …
So one morning, out on the Atlantic coast of France, I get up, and there’s Antoine, my host down in the kitchen. He’d been [...]

What I Did On My Summer Vacation 2008 Part Huit – On The Road to Royan

Race tracks should be this smooth … the Ford Fiesta in action … stay out of the left-hand lane, you moron! … “Sweet Jesus, was that a ’56?”
The bulk of the time I spent in France was out on the Atlantic Coast, in a little seaside fishing village/resort town. The next closest big town was [...]

What I Did On My Summer Vacation 2008 Part Sept – Minivans of France

What I Did On My Summer Vacation 2008 Part Sept – Minivans of France

No, really, minivans … that size thing again … Don’t the French have large families? … sure seem cleaner than ours …
In many ways, minivans are the quintessential American vehicle, and, if you and I were being forthright and practical [...]

What I Did On My Summer Vacation 2008 Part Six

What I Did On My Summer Vacation 2008 Part Six – The Smart Car In The Wild

The perfect car for the modern urban driving environment … that counts as the trunk, huh? … This still counts as a Mercedes? … Two Smarts in one space … any color you want, as long as it’s black [...]

What I Did On My Summer Vacation 2008 – Part Cinq

Your Average French Car …. Comparing the size of your car to everyday objects … special editions – Picasso and xBox? … that design makes sense from the inside … half as thin as Mercedes sheet metal …
Your average French car is, as you would expect, small, weird, ostensibly underpowered, demonstrably over-designed , space [...]

What I Did On My Summer Vacation – 2008 Part Quatre

Scooters In Paris … Vespas are a rare site … Maxis. high speed, high HP … that sounds like more than a 250cc … Apart from bad weather and the whole crush-space thing, they make a whole lot of sense …
As you would imagine, scooters are a widely used for of transportation in France. You [...]

What I Did On My Summer Vacation 2008 – Part Trois

The power and the glory that is the TGV … especially when it utterly fails.
Chicago to NYC in 6 hours For $125 … Choke the Mister … Even at this speed, Avignon still give me the willies … “They don’t know what the problem is” …

What I Did On My Summer Vacation 2008 – Part Deux

A town with 50,000 people, two traffic lights and seemingly 45 roundabouts
Getting from here to there on Roman roads … tailgating as a foreign concept … The yield sign, properly used … bad karma with a scooter …

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