The Last of the Cow Islands

First, for anyone that is confused by the timing of the entries, we have had a number of extremely slow website hotels where it has been difficult to post photos which we normally like to include with the narrative. 

We had a nice ferry ride over to Guernsey.  It started out as, okay, but a bit uncomfortable until I upgraded our seats to the Private Club Class, at which point it became quite nice.  Ah, the joys of a Visa card!

We made it to Guernsey in the early afternoon and we're looking for where our rental car might be since it was included with the hotel.  We had the typical conversation we have at such moments.  "Where was the car supposed to be?"  "I'm not sure, they just said it would be at the ferry, I'm kind of hoping for a guy with a sign."  "What if there isn't a guy with a sign?"  "Not sure, I am open to suggestions."  "Is it with a rental company."  "I have no idea." We noticed the rental car company windows and I ventured up to them, starting with Europcar.  It worked, they were actually expecting us!

We signed some paperwork which I didn't read and went out to see what car we had, another Ford Fiesta.  Fortunately, not all of our joints had yet popped back into place, so it only took half the time to fit back into the small space.  Karen plugged in our destination and we were off to Cobo Bay!

Cobo Bay is gorgeous, and even better when you leave the wrong bay which we first ended up and drove to the correct Cobo Bay!  We stayed in the Cobo Bay hotel, in a corner room with a balcony looking over the bay and it was fantastic!!  We ordered up a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice and settled in.  All was right with the world.

That evening, we had dinner in the hotel, with just possibly the best steaks we have ever had outside the United States (possibly outside of New York and Chicago)!  The dinner was lovely, and for dessert we shared an Eton Mess.  The only reason we even knew what this dessert was was because we watched the "Royal Wedding" last year and this was the dessert served at the royal luncheon because it was Prince William's favorite dessert.  It basically is a "mess", combining a lot of heavy cream with meringue, raspberry filling and other stuff.  This is a dessert that makes cheesecake seem light.

The next day, we stuffed ourselves into the car incredibly inelegantly, hoping no one was watching and did a tour of the island.  In a normal size car, if the roads were normal as in, having enough room to drive on without hitting a wall, it would have taken about fifteen minutes, including a bathroom break.  As our car was more of the "matchbook" variety and the roads varied between "impassable" to "incredibly dangerous" it took a bit longer.  One important difference between the death roads of Jersey and the death roads of Guernsey is that Guernsey actually has rock walls on one side and a small sidewalk with a rock wall on most of the other sides, whereas Jersey just has continuous rock walls on all sides.  The result is that when two cars are approaching each other (or more ominously, a large truck is approaching you), one of the cars can go up onto the sidewalk.  This is not an island I would recommend doing much walking on. 

Apparently, Victor Hugo, the famous French writer who worked on Broadway doing musicals, lived in exile on the Island of Guernsey for 15 years.  We thought, let's go see his house!  We drove into the village where the house was located and the signage directed us up a narrow street, which became narrower and still narrower.  We never actually saw the "Victor Hugo House" as we drove up the street, but we must have passed it.  There was no parking on the street and no offstreet parking near the house.  There was no clear designation of his house.  We continued up the hill as the walls closed in.  We eventually came to a small opening, not really a plaza, more of a living room - not a big one.  There were three apparent openings:  (i) one said "Route Barre" and had a piece of heavy equipment to prove it, (ii) this one had a one-way arrow pointing straight at our front grille, and (iii) the third looked like an entrance to someone's garage, not a big one.  A truck pulled into the living room with us.  I got out of the car and asked the truck driver if he had plans or if he was just going to abandon his truck there.  He spoke a little English and apparently he was in league with the heavy equipment guys, so he had no immediate plans.  He suggested the only way out was through the garage.

We drove up to the entrance to that alley (which makes it sound bigger than it was).  Before going in, we reached out and pulled our side mirrors in because the car (which you may recall is not a big car) would not have fit with the mirrors out.  We then proceeded down hill.  On the way down this narrow hallway, you couldn't help but notice the sea of scratches with a wide variety of paint colors on each side of the walls.  I'm sure that, displayed in the proper context, they might qualify as a type of modern art.

We eventually popped out the other side and I asked Karen what she would like to do.  In retrospect, I don't think she actually "wanted" to do that with Victor Hugo, I think it was more a comment that she had enough of this particular tourist adventure and it was time to return to our hotel.

We did.

The next day we had another marvelous English Breakfast of eggs, bacon, fried tomatoes and toast.  We then headed to the Guernsey airport for our flight to Saint-Malo, France.

The plane we flew on was not large.  Karen and I squeezed into our seats right next to each other.  There was no aisle, there was no space between the seats, there was no space between us and the hull.  We were basically like sardines, only closer and without the oil.  The pilots were cheery and spoke English.  It was all very friendly and I tried to forget that these were the same people who lost an entire Empire.  I was pretty certain they could get us across a few miles of water - couldn't they?

The flight was actually quite smooth and pleasant.  They flew very low, so you had the comfort that we wouldn't fall very far if there was a problem.  Of course, you couldn't get out of the toothpaste tube of an aircraft if it were to fall into water, so there was that.

  

We made it to Dinard Airport, near Saint Malo, found our original car which now looked huge compared to the Ford Fiestas and started out of the parking lot.  Before actually leaving however, we had to put our parking ticket into the "automatique" machine and then put in my credit card.  There is a difference between European credit cards and the kind we have involving some type of chip which we don't have.  This only becomes important when "automatique" machines are trying to read your card and they can't, rejecting your card as invalid.  We backed out of the exit line and parked the car to one side as I went back to the airport.  I patiently waited in line for the lady who handled parking inquiries.  I did my typical, "Bon jour, hello." hoping she would get the message that "hello" was my preferred mode of speech.  She did and she spoke English.  I showed my parking pass and my card and said it didn't work.  She said "Just use the automatique machine."  I said, "I did and it rejected it."  She said, "What did it say?"  I replied, "I don't know, it was in French."  She looked at my card and had the same confused look that everyone in Europe has when they look at it, like you have handed them colored beads in payment and are looking for change.  She eventually understood that I did not have a "cheep" and she ran the card through the credit card machine the "normal" way" (as in swiping) which the "automatique" machines cannot.  I returned to the car, the "automatique" machine accepted my paid ticket and we were on the road to Saint Nazarre!