Amiens - thoughts of French prison

It was black. It wasn't what I had ordered. I didn't care about the color. My order never specified the color. I had specified the type of car that I wanted. This was a KIA. I had requested fine European engineering. I got something from the land of fermented cabbage and cheap electronics. I told the girl at the rental company that it wasn't what I had ordered. She said this was a comparable substitute. I said it was fine. I was so excited to get behind the wheel to speed about the French countryside, that I might even have accepted a Deux Chevaux without objection. What did it matter if the car's make, KIA, was also an acronym for Killed In Action? She said, "Baby, you can drive my car." And that was enough for me. Perhaps I should've pondered those letters more closely. But I didn't. 

It was just the three of us...me and two unforgettable babes...my wife, and the sultry disembodied voice of the Google Maps gal. We were on a road trip in a foreign land with No Particular Place to Go...except we did have a particular place to go, several places in fact. We were headed to Amiens, Beauvais, Richard the Lionheart's castle, and Bayeux. We had a sleek black and somewhat stubby ride with a five speed manual transmission to ourselves for two whole days. Nothing could stop us...or very few things...once we got going in the right direction; turns out those roundabouts are great places to make U-turns; just enter and don't go out until you're going back the way you came. It was exhilarating. My wife used other words; I'm not allowed to repeat those.

We were on a journey of discovery. We discovered that France does in fact have toll roads; we discovered how the Google gal could choose routes that avoided toll roads...after we payed the first toll. We made our way to Amiens. We found our destination, the Amiens cathedral. There were no parking spots. We drove around looking for parking. 

The search for parking began on a rather inauspicious note (b sharp, or maybe c blunt, I'm not sure). Driving up a narrow street (and by narrow, I mean one little car fit comfortably) I found a police car, with lights and siren going, coming directly at me. I wondered if I was in violation; maybe I was going the wrong way on a one-way street; I suddenly wondered what French prison was like; Had the Bastille been rebuilt? Was the Chateau d'If real? Could I be sent to Devil's Island? No. I don't know. And probably not. Respectively. 

It was a two way street, and a vehicle was parked, PARKED! I say, on one side of the street. I could see that only one of us would be able to get by the parked car. I thought about racing the cop for the gap, but the thought passed like a bit of bad gas, and sanity prevailed. I stopped, and let the cop pass both the parked car as well as my car before proceeding. After about 20 minutes of driving around, we were back at the cathedral where a couple spots had opened in our absence. I gave a few euros to the clochard who assisted us in parking, and paid the machine a euro for our parking place. 

After we went through the cathedral, we walked around town until we found a boulangerie to get some lunch. There were a couple restaurants near the cathedral, but they seemed over priced. We had sandwiches and drinks on a bench in the middle of a thoroughfare for foot traffic. We enjoyed lunch and people watching before we had to unpark (or is it depark?--no, that's where de children play.) the car, and put the rubber to the road once more. Very nice time in Amiens...with the exception of the parking problem, and prison scare.