Santa Barbara Photographer Goes to Europe (2010)
Part 6: The Drive to France
~A Photo Story~
We would take the Metro to the airport, where we were hoping to find our rental car. This is the moment I’m glad we only brought one big suitcase. Lugging your stuff over a turnstile can be a little tricky sometimes. We were excited, but a bit nervous as well, since it had been a while since we’d driven a manual shift car. On top of that, we had never driven in another country before. This definitely felt like an adventure!
The first picture is of us in our fancy Ford Fiesta! I put my camera on a trashcan to get that shot…the trashcan is in the bottom right hand corner. I’m pretty sure Mike thinks I’m being a little excessive at this point. Maybe he was annoyed, with good reason, because it took us forever to find the rental car place!
We had tried giving the taxi driver the actual address, and he couldn’t find it in the GPS. We were a little discouraged, and we started to think the rental car place didn’t really even exist. Finally, we realized the taxi driver thought a “g” was a “q” or something like that. I don’t think his hearing skills or his eye-sight were in tip-top shape. We were just happy he was finally able to put the right address into the GPS.
The second picture is of us driving through a tunnel. The third picture I just had to include because there were signs like this of a bull every so often along the highway. The fourth picture is our stop in San Sebastián. You can see in the following picture that San Sebastián is a surfing town. The architecture was really beautiful there, but we didn’t have much time to explore it.
We did have time to do a little eating. The Basque region has a different handle on their tapas. In fact, they are not even called tapas…they are called pintxos (pinchos). Pintxos are already made and sitting out on the bar for you. You can basically grab what you want…unless it’s something they heat up for you. After we ate, we walked around a bit, and then we decided to hit the road. It was kind of rainy anyway.
On our way out of town, there was an accident, and we ended up going the wrong way as we were trying to avoid the traffic. We stopped at a gas station, and that is where I got my last picture of the night. It was a beautiful sky with shimmering lights reflecting off of the wet ground. Soon after we left the gas station, the radio switched from Spanish to French, and we were suddenly in France with my friend Virginia and her boyfriend Matthieu.
I met Virginia in a 4th grade exchange program. She’s been back to America many times, but I had not been back to France since 4th grade. In 2008, Virginia went all the way to Indiana just to be a bridesmaid in my wedding. I made it my mission to see her in France within a few years. Picture #8 is evidence that I succeeded!
Virginia and Matthieu were the most hospitable hosts ever…they gave Mike and I a true local’s perspective. We arrived to a home-cooked meal, and we even had a super cute dog for a few days! Occy makes his first appearance in picture #9. Matthieu said Occy is pronounced like “okie”-dokie. Occy loves to dig. I became slightly obsessed with Occy, and took his portrait many many times. You will see him again.
Stay tuned for more details about our trip to France.
