France at 200 kph - of Grandmothers, Lyon and Rain

In my teens- I traveled to France with my mother- father and grandmother for a month of sightseeing with a rental car. Michael Schumacher and Formula 1 have nothing on my father and our Opel rental Contd...

In my teens- I traveled to France with my mother- father and grandmother for a month of sightseeing with a rental car. Michael Schumacher and Formula 1 have nothing on my father and our Opel rental car.

American fathers have an interesting if somewhat aggravating habit on trips. Yes- I am talking about the desire to see everything there is to see. This was particularly problematic in France- which has a gazillion things to see. For some reason- my memory is a blur! I’ll have to refer back to my Nomad Travel Journal- but here we go…

Churches. Big churches. Small churches. Church ruins. New churches. For three days- my grandmother had insisted we stop at every church we passed. She is just about the greatest grandmother a kid could hope for- but she had been a grade school teacher for forty years and there was just no disobeying. Did I mention we looked at churches?

We pulled into Lyon as the third day turned to evening. It was raining. We were tired and grumpy. After a minor argument- we pulled up in front of an older hotel with vacancies and checked in. Family arrangements being what they were- my parents had one room while my grandmother and I shared a second. We all agreed to take a nap and meet a little later.
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France at 200 kph - of Grandmothers, Lyon and Rain
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As I lay on my bed- I watched the rain come down hard on the windows. I also admired the old- intricate wood structure that was our hotel. I dozed off and was awaken a few hours later by my grandmother.

“The door is stuck!” she told me.

Grumbling- I walked over to the door and gave it a yank. Then I gave it another yank. Like a bad comedy- I put one leg up on the wall and yanked again. Alas- the wood seemed to have swollen and jammed the door shut. I couldn’t budge it.

At this point- my grandmother made a passing comment about the two years of French I had taking in high school and pointed to the phone. Dutifully- I called down to the lobby and chaos ensued. Somehow- we had lost the key- so I couldn’t tell them what room we were in. It just got worse.
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What is the French word for “door?” Don’t know? Neither did I nor do I now. All I could say to the person at the front desk is- “We are stuck!”

To top matters off- I also started yelling my last name- Chapo- thinking they would at least come investigate. After being hung up on twice- it occurred to me that the pronunciation of my last name means “hat” in French. Yes- I was yelling-

“We are stuck! Hat!”
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...
“We are stuck! Hat!”

Intensely cussing up a storm- I walked over to the door and banged it with my fist. It bounced open. My grandmother and I stared at each other and burst out laughing.

I hoofed it to my parent’s room to tell them the story. Half way through the tale- my mother plugged in her hair dryer- flipped it on and blew out the electricity for the entire floor.

We left very early the next morning.


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