Renting a car and other practicalities

Sunday, September 7

After seeing the lay of the land, we realized that we could not do without a car for the entire two weeks. We found out from the front desk how to get to the airport by bus and trekked up the hill to the 6007 road to find the bus stop and wait for the bus. The bus we were waiting for never came, but another bus stopped at the red light and we ran up to ask where it was going – the airport! The driver looked at us dubiously since we had no luggage, but we assured him we wanted to go to the airport. It cost us €33 for two fares – this was an express right to the airport. Sorry to keep listing the prices, but we kept being astounded at how expensive everything was. Anyway, it was nice to be on an express, in comfortable air conditioning, on our way to rent a car that we could, hopefully, afford.

And we did. After finding out, once again, that there were only prestige cars at one company (€2000 for the two weeks) we found that Europcar had affordable Toyotas and VWs for us. Whew. We ended up with a Yaris that took good care of us thru our trip.

While we were at the airport, I found a kiosk with a computer and internet connection, so decided to send a couple of emails. Our cell phone didn’t have service and I wanted to be in touch with Ehren and Sarah, and also our friends Pat and Tony who were coming for a visit from England on the middle weekend of our trip. The French don’t use the QWERTY keyboard! My emails (I should have kept copies) were full of typos, abbreviations, all lower case, and very short!

Then we had the adventure of getting back to Cap d’Ail from the Nice airport, which actually was no big deal. Jim learned how to drive like a Frenchman very quickly! When we got back, we decided to see what was at the bottom of the hill where our resort was perched – we found the town of Cap d’Ail and a road to Monaco. We had learned that the big supermarket in the area was in Monaco and not open on Sunday. We did a trial run (what a traffic mess in Monaco!) and then went back to the resort. Exhausted. The resort had a snack bar and we availed ourselves of their offerings for a late lunch/early dinner. The snack bar, also open air, overlooked the swimming pool, which is an “infinity” pool – it looks like it drops off into nothing at the far edge, melting right into the sky. Very attractive effect. And a very nice pool. Very refreshing. And the snack bar turned out to be quite sufficient for our needs J

The Towel Saga

One of the things we didn’t know about the “residence” concept in Europe is that guests are expected to bring/supply a lot of their own things – toilet paper, soap, towels. After we fought with the front desk about getting enough towels for ourselves (and in anticipation of our guests!) we saw that other guests, at the swimming pool at least, had brought their own beach towels. Picture this: I am at the front desk asking for eight towel sets – one set equals a thin bath-size towel and a hand towel. My calculations are: two towel sets each for Jim and me – 2 bath towels each – one for bathing and one for swimming and then two more towel sets each for Pat and Tony for the same purpose. The extra hand towels would be used for bath mat, tea towel, hand towel for the bathroom with the toilet, etc. The woman staffing the desk that day looks at me like I’m a nut – she says “The maximum occupancy of your apartment is 5 people; I can’t give you 8 sets of towels.” I explained my calculations to her and she said that we were to use the same towel for bathing and for swimming. I’m sure I looked horrified. We ended up compromising – I took 4 towel sets and Jim and I ended up using all of them before Pat and Tony came. I then got 4 more sets before they arrived, and we made do. We kept making do!