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An Adventure of a Lifetime

 

I never took the time to write this story down, so now that I am getting an itch for adventure again I figured I would recount my last great motoring adventure. It involved several countries, my cousin, and a Peugeot.

The Route:

A few years back I got tired of the rat race, the everyday of being a drone in an office and while I loved the job and the industry, I needed some time off. I was making good money working as the Special Projects Director for a large restoration parts company here in Southern California. However, after four years it was time for a monumental vacation. So, I quit my job, kissed my fiancée (now wife) good bye, and set off for Europe. With little more than a rough plan, a road map, and a hastily arranged short term lease with Peugeot’s “Open Europe” program, I landed in London to meet my younger cousin Nathan that had recently finished a exchange student program in the UK and was not excited about coming home right away.

I spent a few days in London while we made arrangments to get to souther France where our new Peugeot was to be delivered. London is an amazing city so much history, from the Romans, to the Second World War every corner of London offers a glimpse of times lost, while the ultra modern buildings like the Gherkin give a foretaste of things to come. Coming from the Los Angeles area where everything is rebuilt about every 20 years it was interesting to see the old buildings of London still pockmarked from the German bombs. I could go on and on about the British Library, Tower of London, etc… but this is a story about motoring so back to that. We had decided to pick up our sparkling new Peugeot 206sw in Montpellier, in the south of France and after a quick flight on Ryan Air for around $50 we were in sunny Southern France.

This was a very good idea as there is nowhere on earth I could imagine being more beautiful than the French Riviera…Italy would prove me wrong. Landing in France, we get the typical customs hold ups, and make a phone call to the Peugeot Open Europe contact that was meeting us with the car. A very polite young man walked us to the car; I giving Nathan a very sinister look confirmed with the Peugeot representative that the lease included “unlimited mileage” he nodded yes, I think he knew that the resale on this car would be slightly dented by the amount of miles we were going to put on the car. In Europe, I had discovered the average car travels less than 8,000 kilometers a year that is just under 5,000 miles a year. In California my home state we drive on average 15,000 miles a year, that over 24,000 kilometers. Nathan and I had laid out an ambitious route that would allow us to cover almost 18,000 kilometers in just 21 days, seeing everything Europe had to offer before running out of money and retreating back to London.

We were off, since Nathan had been living in London and had done a bit of traveling in Europe already, so I had him make our arrangements for the first night. We had decided to head right to Barcelona (Spain), and when we got their, a street fair was going on, the road signs were mounted on the sides of the buildings far out of view, the Peugeot is hardly able to move amongst all the revelers crowding the streets. The hotel Nathan had selected has a strange Arabic sounding name for being in Spain, but right now, I am wondering why the car feels splashy. I can tell…we have a flat, there is nowhere to park, we don’t speak Spanish, and we can’t even find this hotel. I see a parking garage and pull in. A very nice parking attendant points us to a location where we can park for 12 Euros for 24 hours, he even pulls a floor jack out and helps us change a tire, perhaps Spain is a civilized country after all.

Nathan is attempting to find out where the hotel is (it’s a hostel), and by the grace of God it was just a few blocks away, we left our car in the parking garage and walked a few blocks following a map drawn up by the parking attendant. As we made our way to the hostel, I started to notice that many of the signs were in Arabic, and that men in traditional Arab clothing were standing in the doorways looking cross at us. The streets started to look worse and worse, and the hotel did not look much better. We checked in and we are shown to what the man at the front desk called rooms. “Nathan, where the hell did you find this place” I said, “booked it online” he replied, “it looked nice”. Our “rooms” were metal boxes stacked three high with a ladder, a curtain, a mattress (using that term lightly), and a small lockable box. “We are paying to go to prison,” I said to Nathan who laughed. I was convinced we would be killed, or at least robbed. Later on that night Nathan see’s a man peering into my box, and tells him to take a hike. The next morning we discovered that Nathan’s alarm clock had stolen…we packed, went back to the car and dropped off our bags, and wondered around Barcelona. It is a painfully beautiful city, and I could not help to snap away, at this point in my life I was still an aspiring photographer. You could tell the photos that Nathan took with me in them because they are not in focus, or the apature is set wrong. We went to seek out an internet café, and a real café for some e-mail and breakfast, what was really amazing is the shear amount of porn being sold out of special porn newsstands. The city market is made up of small booths, and every other one is selling porn. I was done with Spain, while I am sure there is much to see and do, how good could it be from a country that builds the SEAT Alhambra.

 

Back on the road and in my adopted home country of France I feel much better, I understand more of the language, and the food is amazing and cheap. Coming from the U.S. I was honestly expecting the French people to attempt to kill me every chance they got since we only hear stories of the rude French. But I found them to be some of themost engaging, friendly, and patient people on earth. The secret is to at least attempt to communicate as best you can in French and be respectful that their language, it is a source of pride for them, demanding that they speak English is rude and we saw plenty of American’s (mostly with fanny packs) getting upset at people at restaurants, hotels, and bars because they did not speak English. News flash you’re not in an English speaking country. As we passed through France on the way to Italy, I discovered my place. It is the place I would pick up and move to if given the opportunity in a hear beat, taking the wife and dogs along with me. This place is Cassis in Southern France; I would move to Cassis right now, if only I could find a way.

In Monaco I was in car lovers heaven, pulling up to a light the car in front of me is a Zonda, next to me a vintage Ferrari, and behind me a Bentley Continental. I however was behind the wheel of a mighty Peugeot. Now I had owned a Peugeot 405 here in the US and loved the car, it was fast, clean, reliable, and one of the best handling front wheel drive cars I have ever owned. I had been dreaming of owning a 206 for a daily driver for years, and even looked into buying one in Mexico and bringing it to the US, however, the smog and safety Nazis will not allow a French car in the US…yet we can buy a Daewoo??? The car we picked out was a manual, gas powered wagon, we figured we may not always be able to get a hotel so at least the station wagon would allow us to sleep in the car in our sleeping bags, we did do this a few nights, but we did it towards the end of the trip in the snow, not a good idea…. We passed into Italy and Nathan was excited and he had a long list of things we wanted to see from Pisa to Pompeii so we had a long drive ahead of us. We had made a deal that we would stay off the main roads, the car being a manual I had to drive the entire trip, but I did not mind much. I attempted while in Italy to teach Nathan stick shift driving, but it did not go well, and we could not afford to replace the clutch so I contunied to drive.

We drove through Rome and having learned our lesson in Barcelona found a nice quite village with a train station outside of the city parking was free and it only cost 2 Euros to ride the train into the city round trip. The advantage to having a car is you don’t have to carry your gear with you. Just take what you need and lock the rest up in the trunk. Words cannot describe the city of Rome, unless you have seen it, you can’t even comprehend the scale of it all. Spending the entire day in Rome was amazing, but there was much more to see, we hopped a train and got back to the car, where we set off south towards Pisa to see the leaning tower then on to Pompeii. Italy is much like Southern California many times while driving along the coast you could believe that you were driving along the Pacific Coast Highway, many of the similar plants, the only major difference is the buildings are a little older, and the food is slightly better.

 

The food is the best part of Europe they have the small café or street food down to an art, New York has hotdogs, L.A. as Tacos, but you can find amazing homemade treats any little town in Europe. Having driven down the coast of Italy as far south as Pompeii, we decided to take a road less traveled up the dead center of the country and head back towards France. The middle of Italy is much like the middle of America, farmland, ranches, open spaces, but unlike the Midwest of America, Italy’s interior is dramatic. Cities like Orvieto, Siena, Florence, and Turin are found here, and each has an amazing story and it’s own unique architecture and culture.

Gas stations in each country are different some have no attendants at all and have a strange gate system you have to use to get in, others are just closed on Sundays and good luck finding gas anywhere else, also it is very expensive, so if you are planning a European motoring getaway, bring lots and lots of extra cash. As we powered north towards Modena, I could feel the Ferrari’s calling me, and upon arriving I was not disappointed, they were everywhere, it was like being at the old Crystal Cove event in Malibu, but every day…there are also a lot of odd cars roaming the road, cars that make my classic MINI look like a massive SUV. (See photo)

Now there is a massive tunnel that connects Italy and France through the alps, however, it costs a lot of money to go through so we decided that we would attack the alps head on; in winter, in a Peugeot. The Italian side was cleared, but after turning a corner that took us to the French side of the mountain, we discovered that the French road workers did not feel like clearing the road from what we could tell, ever. We were firmly stuck, no chains, no cell phone, no village nearby…. But the Eagle Scout in me kicked in and I did have a small pocket knife and was able to cut some branches from a tree to stuff under the front wheels to get some traction. With Nathan pushing, I gunned it, only to get out, and hit ice, the car did some interesting maneuvers and came to rest about 20 feet down the road. So after almost dying in the snow at the top of the alps, we decided to take the tunnel.

 

Back on our adopted home soil, we headed north towards Paris, Le Mans, and the invasion beaches. We first headed west towards Le Mans, and then on to Bayeux, where we went to see the Bayeux tapestry. From there we drove to the invasion beaches and took some time to reflect upon the sheer size of them, just how far it was to make it to any form of cover, our great grandfather fought in the pacific and Nathan and I both reflected on the bravery that those men had to step off those boats. After a visit to the American cemetery to pay our respects we loaded up and set off for Paris. Having forgotten our lesson from Barcelona, we drove into Paris. Paris is everything they say it is and more, it is one of the worst cities on earth to drive. I have driven in some strange parts of the world Managua and Jakarta come to mind, and they were cakewalks when compared to Paris. Trust me; drive in Paris only if you have a good GPS, good knowledge of written French, and very good reflexes.

We were running out of time, we had to have the car in Belgium within a week so we headed or Germany, the only country with speed limits posted for army tanks. Passing through the German wine country, I have never seen grapes grown on hills like this before, it was a breath taking sight to see vineyards snaking their way on mountainsides, with small monorails that the farmers ride to collect their harvest. Pushing into the Germany, we discovered that they really do like David Hasselhoff, and we were greeted by a massive billboard promoting a drink of some kind. We soon discovered a gun/liquor/fireworks store in a small town and that has to be the best store ever, and the fact that beer is sold in the soda machines, made Germany one of our favorite countries.

Our little Peugeot was doing well as we cracked the 15,000-kilometer mark. We wanted to see the bridges from operation Market Garden so we went to the Netherlands, then pushed on to Belgium where we had to visit “Auto World” a massive museum that has just about every type of car you can imagine, as well as war museum that has items from Roman times to current. We found a nice little hotel, and spent the night, I was exhaust having just driven just over 17,800 kilometers, we had done it, came to see it all in a whirlwind and we did it averaging over 800 kilometers a day (526 miles), some days we would drive well into the night and sleep in the car just to make sure we could get to the next stop on our map. If I were to go back I would do it differently spend more time relaxing, and less time driving to every historically significant spot on the map, but I would not change one thing about this trip, because, we discovered so much fun.

About the Author

Michael grew up in the car rich culture of Southern California, and purchased his first car at the age of just 14. He has owned more then 60 cars, motorcycles, and scooters. Michael’s other passions include photography, and travel, having been to over 20 countries and almost every state in the union. Having driven in over 14 countries Mike has great stories, insights, and photos of the world seen from behind the wheel of a car.

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