"Forward one inch. Stop! Good. Now turn the wheel to the right... your other right. Back two inches. Stop! Turn the wheel right. No like the right you used before. Forward one inch. Stop! Whoops the automatic garage light just went out, don't move."
We were in Marseilles, France -- well, actually, in the parking garage that went with the apartment where we were staying in Marseilles. It had ten spaces in a lot that would have four spaces in the U.S., under a ten-story building held up by huge cement pillars that you have to maneuver around.
"Forward an inch. Turn the wheel two degrees. Left stop. Right stop. Forward stop. Backward stop. Whoops wait the light just went out again."
Today we were venturing off on our own for the first time in our rental Peugeot, a car the size of the back seat in a Hummer. We were so nervous about making a wrong turn on the narrow one-way streets that are lined with cars parked bumper to bumper on both sides, that I went out and walked the route that would get us from our Rue to A7. My wife will be driving and I will be navigating. They wanted an extra 35 Euros for a second driver. I think my wife would have paid them twice that much to keep me out of the driver's seat. I make her nervous driving when we are one of three cars on a six-lane freeway.
"Do I take the tunnel?"
I looked at the Google instructions we had printed out. They were in French. "Prendre à droite!" I yelled out, which meant either take a right or pass me the wine list and make it fast.
Somehow we made it to A7 and pulled into the middle lane. The guy behind us honked. I'm convinced you couldn't sell a used car in Marseilles if the horn didn't work. Air conditioning's out, okay. Lights out, fine. Bald tires, no problem, but no horn, forget it. The instant you make a mistake they honk and look at you like you should be shot at dawn.
Then they pass you going 130 kilometers per hour in a car that looks like it should be full of circus clowns.
We had Google instructions to get us all the way to centre ville (cen-trayvee) in Aix (X) en Provence. The French use a ton of letters that they never pronounce. In the musées (museums) there will be a three paragraph description in French describing a piece of art and below it in English it will say: "Very old painting, artist now dead."
Aix was full of tiny streets, roundabouts, tons of people walking in front of you, people behind you honking, and me reading the directions.
"Prendre à droite!" I mean prendre à gauche. I mean Rejoindre! Rejoindre!"
I may have alluded to this before but to find a parking space in a town in France is like finding a needle in a Monet haystack. We finally found a lot that was just a stone's throw from centre ville, that is, if you fired the stone from a canon. So we walked.
Traffic lights are interesting. Drivers stop beside the light instead of behind it, so that they are always looking to their right when it turns green and they run you over. Then they honk.
We had lunch at a cafe on the sidewalk (there are no other kind). Ours was a table for two, but the railing didn't quite go all the way around so, like parking, they squeezed a third chair in, which we had to maneuver around.
"Forward an inch. Turn your butt two degrees. Stop. Left. Right. Forward. Backward. Sit."
Lunch includes three courses and a bottle of wine and takes two hours. It ends at two p.m. That's when everyone heads back to their cars, honk several times to make sure the horns are working, and race round and round the roundabouts to get back to one of the highways.
"Droite! Droite! No, your other droite."
Tomorrow we head off to see some Roman ruins, which will probably be really old by the time we find them.