Travel and Communications
Eurostar. We traveled from London's Waterloo Station to Paris' Gare du Nord on the Eurostar high speed train. Station to station only took two hours and fifty minutes, making this a very speedy way to make the trip. There were two brief stops, one on each side of the tunnel under the English Channel, but when crossing western France, the Eurostar cruised at 185mph! The coaches were very smooth and quiet, and a dining coach was just a couple of cars away. Looking out the window of our coach at France, the little villages seemed to 'snap' by with the speed we were maintaining. Our return to London from Brussels was on the Eurostar once more - we felt this train was a great way to travel when getting there was more important than the trip itself.
Renault Modus. Our rental car for this trip was a silver colored Renault Modus, rented
from Europecar through the on-line
service autoeurope.com. The Modus
was small and a bit odd looking (although in a 'cute' sort of way). The
car was very well equipped with power windows, air-conditioning, cruise control,
AM/FM/CD player, and more. The seats were comfortable, and the ride was
compliant and smooth, with the added bonus that it was very quiet inside at
highway speeds. The facet of the car that set it apart was that it had a
1.5 liter turbo-diesel engine with a five-speed manual transmission. With
such a little diesel engine, the Modus was somewhat sluggish in acceleration,
but as it was a diesel with a turbocharger, there was enough torque that we
almost never had to shift down when going up hills. All in all, the Modus
was a delightful car to drive. Long after we returned the car in Brussels,
I calculated the fuel costs and miles per gallon, and was delighted to find that
for our whole drive, which included a mixture of city and highway driving, the
Modus returned almost exactly 48 miles per gallon!
Communications. We approached the idea of traveling in a country where we have only the most limited knowledge of the spoken language as daunting prospect. We did spend time with computerized French language training at home, but the reality was that listening to those CDs was far different from listening to the waiter at a sidewalk cafe describing the 'special of the day.' However, by always greeting anyone we met with a smile and a "Bonjour!" we found that we actually had very little trouble. Much of the time, "bonjour" and "merci" were more than enough to get by. When more was needed, we often found that by making that initial first try and then admitting our lack of further ability with French was enough to realize that English would be fine. There were a couple of times where communications problems seemed insurmountable, but somehow, smiles and patience on all sides won the day. We hope to be much more capable in the local language the next time we go, but communication was not a problem this time, even though we didn't speak the language.