Adventure Time!: Day Twelve: France is cray-cray!

We woke up this morning and didn't know where we were since we had arrived at night and driven for awhile until we found an aire which is a place for trucks and campers and stuff to spend the night. We had already set up the bed so when we got there we just went to sleep. We woke up to an amazing view of the French countryside and there was a place there which had a shop, cafe, toilets etc so that was good.

We had some coffee and marmite toast for breakfast, yay for NZ marmite! It survived the journey. Then we headed off South. We set the GPS to avoid toll roads (which is heaps of roads) because they can be expensive and also we wanted to drive through the country rather than just on motorways. We spent the morning driving through all sorts of little towns and seeing heaps of cool stuff. We tried to work out what the road signs were saying but the most popular ones seem to be the ones which show deer jumping (haven't seen any deer yet) and people riding horses (haven't seen that yet either). We were in the countryside and got hungry so stopped at the next aire which was in the middle of nowhere, with fields all around and a river with some big as fish in it. There were also ducks and ducklings, so cute!

We had some sandwiches at a picnic table there and then kept driving south. At about 4 in the afternoon we accidently arrived in this massive city! We thought it was going to be a town but it was not. It was super hard to drive around because French drivers are crazy and they don't seem to stick to their lanes or indicate! It turned out to be the town where Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake! After a failed mission to find the information centre we went to a McDonalds to use their Wi-Fi. McDonalds is our new best friend for using all their internet because we didn't know where to buy any internet from before we got here.

We decided to head to a place called Pont d-le-arche for the night because they had an aire there next to the river (Seine) which looked pretty. We managed to get out of the city alright, although we really want to know now how many accidents the French have compared to us because they are crazy! We got to near where we wanted to go for the night and found a supermarket (my favourite!) so we went in there to get a converter charger for the van and some food. They had a double aisle of cheese, it was amazing! Also all their wine is super cheap so we got some food and wine for tomorrow, and got some petrol and went to go find the aire.

It was not easy. The road signs and stuff in France are the worst! So we drove around for ages looking for signs and trying to figure out where to go. Like actually ages. But anyway we found it eventually and it was so nice there! Heaps of trees and ducks and stuff. Also a cat and a man were sleeping on the riverside (not together). The man may have been a bum. We made our first camper friends with the people parked next to us who were from England and were super nice. They said they come to France all the time in their camper but it was their last night on this trip.

We made some pasta for dinner and went to bed to read since it was really late by then and we were tired from so much crazy driving. In the night was the actual biggest storm ever, so much thunder and lightning, it was crazy! Super loud but also cool, and no rain came in which was good. Better than a tent!