Troyes...and more car trouble

We left Dijon in high spirits knowing we couldn't push the car too much but that we'd at least be able to check out a few towns and Paris on the way to a ferry to the UK where frankly we didn't care what the car did from then.

We stopped in a town called Troyes which was very, very pretty and absolutely chokka bloc with ancient houses and narrow cobbled streets. We stayed two nights doing a bit of sightseeing and went to leave on the second morning but in a very Dijon-esc way the car started to overheat just as we were getting out of the town. This led to several moments of deep breathing interspersed with a few choice words and peppered with crazy puppeteering.

Luckily the town had a brilliant, cheap and friendly hotel which we booked back into and spent another two nights organising another garage to fix the car.

The major problem was that although Troyes was a great spot it wasn't somewhere we were interested in spending four nights in (not without sampling all of the restaurants which eats into our budget). Our marvellous hotel held the solution to our problem- wifi!

We proceeded to download a couple of movies but more importantly both seasons and the movie of Twin Peaks.

We consumed the entire lot over two and a half days...... You can only imagine the abstract dreams we were having and are still having.

After much to-ing and fro-ing with the garage they let us know the car wouldn't be ready for at least another four days so we jumped a train to Paris (more on that later). We phoned everyday and we kept getting pushed back until finally we were told to come down on the sixth day as the car was ready!

We didn't get into town till later in the evening from Paris so headed down on the following morning and were told AGAIN that the car wasn't ready and that we needed to come back in two days. We had walked from the hotel to the mechanics, bags on and all and had to walk back to the hotel where we were greeted with- 'No, no, it isn't ready!?!'

The most difficult thing in all of this was definitely language. We relied on receptionists to be our interpreters but there were many, many difficult conversations. We even rang The George in search of French speakers at one stage.

But finally on a Tuesday morning we were free and also out of time and money and had to head to Calais for a ferry to Dover- That was France :(

Photos: Typical streets and wonky houses in Troyes