I woke up early for a busy day of driving around to visit a number of little hill towns. Unfortunately, as I closed the trunk after stowing my bag I heard a tinklingly crash. My hopes that the disturbing noise had been merely coincidental to me closing the trunk were dashed when I observed the pavement glistening with portions of my passenger side window. Lucky me, my car had been broken into overnight. As I walked back to my hotel, I noticed that mine wasn’t the only lucky car in the parking lot last night. Two others were also sporting shattered windows. Fortunately, I hadn’t left anything in the car to be stolen (when you only have one bag, it’s hard to leave anything behind in the car).
Now, I really have to mention again how tiny, quaint & charming Roussillon is. So peaceful. It genuinely falls in the category of “the last place on earth you’d expect something like this to happen”. Oh, well.
After talking to my hotelier (who only spoke broken English to my gibberish French), I found out that I needed to head to the Gendarmerie (which I think is roughly the county sheriff or highway patrol; no local police in Roussillon) to file a report. This was located in a neighboring town, about a 15 minute drive through the countryside away. Mercifully, the weather was dry & mild.
My visit to the Gendarmerie went much smoother than I had feared. The Officer who took my report spoke pretty good English and was even kind enough to help me with talking to the rental car company. However, I also discovered that the Gendarmerie takes their lunch (two) hour(s) very seriously (yes, even the police stations close for lunch).
Getting a replacement car was the biggest challenge of the day. It took almost an hour on & off the phone for the company to locate one for me. And then it was over an hour distant from the Gendarmerie in the opposite direction of where my next hotel was located. Plus, it wasn’t going to be ready until 5pm. Bah.
So, as the Gendarmerie closed up shop to make their ways out for lunch, I headed off driving with a missing window providing a refreshing breeze. I had plenty of time, so I decided to at least try to drive by some of the towns I had hoped to visit. The scenery is beautiful in this area and every 10 minutes or so you pass an impossibly picturesque medieval village perched on a hilltop. But, since locking a car with a missing window doesn’t do much good, I couldn’t get out to visit any of them.
After driving by what villages I could, I headed towards the town where I was supposed to pick up my replacement car. As I drove in I thought to myself “as much as I hate to see American culture infiltrating Europe, I really wouldn’t mind finding a drive through right now”, since I couldn’t really get out of the car for more than a “quick stop” type store. And funny if I don’t see an advertisement for a “McDrive” on a bus stop shelter once I get into town. So, I’m thinking that I’m not going to drive out of my way for a McDonald’s, but if I were to drive past it, that would certainly help solve a problem. And sure enough, there it is. So, I circle the roundabout and enter McDonald’s only to find the McDrive completely occupied by the McDelivery truck which had arrived just ahead of me. Oh well. I can’t really complain much about NOT having to eat McDonald’s.
Luckily, when I get to rental car place 2 hours early (I figured I’d just drop off the car and walk someplace for lunch) the lady working there hadn’t been informed of my situation. I say luckily, because she just proceeded to get me setup with another car right away, instead of waiting for whatever car I was supposed to get, but not before 5pm. As it turned out, I think the car she gave me was probably scheduled for maintenance (it had a terrible shake from the front end as it got up to highway speeds), but at the time I was just glad I didn’t have to wait 2 hours to get a car.
So, in my new car with all of it’s windows I headed for Vaison la Romaine and my hotel for the next two nights. I had to skip the scenic drive over a local mountain because it was getting late, but it had been a day of missed sights anyway. And I ended up arriving in Vaison early enough to do a bit of wandering around before dark, which was nice.
All in all, it could have been much worse. I didn’t lose anything. And mercifully it was the passenger window that was broken and not the driver’s side. So, basically it just cost me a full day’s touring and a fair amount of frustration. I’ve hurt worse.