EXCERPT FROM SARA’S
JOURNAL
November 6, 1998
Bordeaux
Out of interest in exploring a region we have not yet visited, we drive
to Bordeaux, in the southwestern region of Aquitaine. It is here we hope to find a Gites
de France office, and rent a small cottage in the region.
Here’s a word on Gites. A gite is a self-catering rural cottage,
urban apartment or villa. Gites De France has offices in every department of every region
in France as well as London, and lists over 40, 000 gites. One can rent a gite by the week
or weekend and it is one of the best ways to experience France. It can be very economical
($30 CDN per day) or more luxurious. Through experience we have decided that in the
off-season the system is ideal, especially for long stays.
Tonight we are in a modern, budget, side-of-the highway hotel called Quick
Palace. It has taken us about nine hours to drive from Cherbourg to Bordeaux with
traffic jams due to highway improvements and accidents. We are getting the impression that
if it is not summertime, the French are improving their most efficient and modern highway
network.
This room is yellow. I don’t just mean sort of yellow. I mean
completely yellow, with yellow laminate wall mounted headboard and yellow industrial
curtains. The room is just large enough to fit the bed. The bathroom is reminiscent of the
Irish Ferry, except there is no shower curtain. There is a toilet, a drain on the floor
and a sink that shares the showerhead. There is no ventilation and the little plastic room
smells like its last customer. Rich is trying to deodorize with his Athlete’s Foot
powder.
We scrounge for dinner by getting back on the dual carriageway and
taking the next exit (that’s one exit closer to Paris). Because Alfi is right-hand
drive and the French use the left-hand drive system I have the distinct honour of ordering
Rich’s Big Mac Best Of avec Diet Coke s’il vous plait. I am now
nourishing with chocolate-covered Digestives.
Hotels are the sorts of places you either feel totally pampered in or
downright low. It’s not home. It’s not yours. It’s not even your sleeping
bag and tent, which takes on the monumentality of regal throne once you have been setting
it up and taking it down for a few days. One can grow attached to anything that bears
consistency. I’ve had traveling salespeople tell me that staying in hotels for weeks
on end is a lonely and shaky experience. Even the finest can lack personality and warmth,
leaving one longing for a comfortable old chesterfield that never requires a check-out.
Rich has a system. On our first night of camping, anywhere, he unrolls
my sleeping bag and sets it up beside his. I feel low with the adjustment from
"home" to "away". Missing the bathtub, comforts, roots. I’m
always better by the morning, in love with the traveling and into the swing of the road.
Tonight I grin and bear these yellow walls and the plastic room with the drain. We snuggle
down together in the familiarity of each other’s arms.
