May 24 not the best day

1) the pink road displayed by the GPS has suddenly disappeared without warning Felix (the speaker) and without a trace on any map. The road displayed a minute later was a good road but the Mystery of the Lost Highway remains unsolved and annoys us quite a bit. We Are Not Amused.

2) right after we leave the highway, without warning, on our right on the very small road, a field of tulips. Very pretty. A driver from the opposite direction also thinks so, and barely misses driving into our car.

3) the address of the guest room for the two next days seems to be in a wide open field. We try to find our way, and up driving into a driveway to ask for directions; somebody’s getting out, we wave, she doesn’t see us apparently and doesn’t stop. By the time we’ve turned around without crushing the dog ... THE GATE IS SHUT. There’s an electronic eye but it doesn’t open the gate.

4) We call our hosts. The line is bad and the call is dropped. Once, twice. Madame calls back, we tell her where we are. A few minutes go by, she calls again. The call is dropped. We wonder if we've used up our call time. Frantically, I try to send an email, using the iPad.

5) the mailbox of our jail shows an address which, I discover, is not the address to the people who are looking for us.

6) as a precaution I try to refill the phone, it can be done by phone - but we can’t hear their instructions - or online - but the site requires an invoice number to identify me ... and anyway, come tot hink of it, the website will not accept my credit card

7) I hit a faraway hotspot, but the signal is vvvvery low, and the 3G signal comes and goes

8) Carlos, our host, finds us, I leave with our luggage; an hour later, Roger is released for good behaviour; we're now hungry. Annie explains how to find a restaurant, we leave and we promptly get lost because Roger, too tired, forgot the instructions

9) I look for a restaurant with the Yelp app, I find one, the address given by Yelp is wrong

10) I took my backup battery before starting dinner and it gave me just two hours of additional power which I think is very little

Now, the few good things

1) The road to La Rochelle from Plozévet was more than 60% highway and was very easy

2) we saw two churches, today, that Roger photographed immediately; we may come back tomorrow

3) we eventually found the restaurant and it was a charming place; three times, quacking ducks passed by our table; twice I wasn’t fast enough to take a picture and the third time, the iPad had gone dead

5) with cocktails, the restaurant offered a special appetizer plate: fried onion rings, squid fritters and about four dozen tiny fried smelts - it was absolutely delicious. I ate it, along with a little cheese from Roger’s menu, that included lamb chops with garlic cream, a side of “mojettes”, that’s white beans cooked a long time with other vegetables so that they get puréed






6) the waitress was very nice and cheerful and chatted with us about everyday living for somebody like her, in short, she works hard for very little money

7) we have managed to return without taking one single wrong turn

Weather: Sunny with cloudy periods (quite a few cloudy periods, though)