Au revior, Peugeot!

GAP - Nadine’s old Peugeot finally showed her age, and at a most inopportune time. Mike and I were started headed back to Aix so I could grab the TGV to Paris, when the car began overheating. We stopped just before getting on the toll way, and re-filled the radiator but what had been a slow drip yesterday had progressed to a steady streaming leak this morning. Thinking quickly on our feet (thankfully we didn’t polish off that bottle of Scotch last night, as we had contemplated), Mike re-directed us to Gap, where there was: 1) a Peugeot dealer, and 2) a train station.

The mechanic at the Peugeot dealer quickly diagnosed the problem as fatal (blown head gasket), at least from a cost to repair perspective for a car that old. Quelle dommage, but I had a schedule to keep. So we made a bee line to the train station, where, thanks to a surprisingly nimble-fingered ticket agent, I was able to cancel my original TGV ticket from Aix, get a local train to Marseilles, and re-book on a later TGV from St. Charles Station in Marseilles to Paris. All within minutes.

The efficiency of the French train system impressed me, too – you can basically get anywhere in the country on the rails, even if it sometimes is not the most direct route. Gap to Marseille was about two-plus hours, albeit at a noticeably slower pace than the TGV, but still efficient and comfortable.

That was all fine and good, but I still had two flights to deal with later in the day (Paris to London on Air France, then an overnight back home via JFK on American) and it was clear I was probably not going to make either.

I jumped on the train in Gap just as it was departing la gare, and Mike made his way back to the sister’s house to help sort out my flights and figure out what to do with the car (he could still drive it but it’s days were numbered). Within short order, we had Toni and Nadine on Skype, the Blackberry and the local (Orange) cell phone I had topped up, all of us working my itinerary from various angles. After much electronic to’ing and fro’ing over the options at hand, we decided it was best for me to deal with the flights when I got to the Charles De Gaulle, which I did by 4:30 (remarkably, only an hour or so later that I had originally planned, but still too late to make my flights). In the end, I found a friendly American Airlines agent just as she was leaving for the day, re-booked a flight from Paris to Miami for the next day ($100 change fee, no extra award miles needed), and had an uneventful night at the Ibis Hotel in Terminal 3.