Local Time: July 15, 2014
Updates from there have been interrupted here. Here is the update from Japan.
On this day we said goodbye to the apartment in Toulouse where we stayed for 3 nights. It was a very nice apartment and we all appreciated it very much.
The weather was not so good on the first two days, but this day was fine. It seems that the fine weather will continue for a while.
Now, from this day, we will rent one more car and go to Manton, our final destination, with two cars. I am the driver of the car we have already rented, and my father is the driver of the second car we will rent.
- 私の車＝ジュニアチームカー：わたしたち夫婦とわたしたちの兄弟姉妹
- 父の車＝シニアチーム：わたしたちの両親
We aim east with an allocation of
To rent the new car, my father and I went to the station ahead of the others. We rented the car at the same place as two days ago, Toulouse Central Station, and made a reservation on rentalcars.com. I also asked the staff at the counter of citer (that’s the name of the car rental company I booked on rentalcars.com). The guy at the counter of rentalcars.com was also the same.
The only difference was the place where the car was parked. It was placed in the multi-story parking lot right next to the counter. Why was it such a remote place the day before yesterday…?
And the other big difference was that this time it was a manual car. Nice, I envy you…. It was the first time in decades that his father had driven a manual car. I rode in the passenger seat to take him to the apartment where we were staying, and he seemed to have no problem starting the car, but after that, shifting gears and accelerating seemed to be difficult in the streets of Europe unless he got his bearings.
But then I thought about it, the car I rented two days ago is an automatic, so I might be able to exchange it for this one. I’m used to driving with automatic transmission, and I have enough experience of driving in Europe, so I think it will be no problem at all.
I immediately went back to the station again and tried to negotiate with the rental car attendant.
The result was not a car swap, but we were able to add a driver to each other’s cars so that I could drive a manual and my dad could drive an automatic.
By the way, unlike two days ago, the negotiation went smoothly because there was a staff who could speak English well.
Like the fact that we were able to rent an automatic and a manual, we were also lucky that our second car had a larger trunk.
In fact, the car we rented on the first day was a half-assed SUV with a very small trunk, so although it could hold four people, it was only big enough to hold three people’s luggage even if we tried our best.
However, because the second Opel we were driving that day was a station wagon type, it could carry the luggage of five or six people, which meant that two cars could carry the luggage of eight people.
It was a really close call.
I was told I could rent this car in the first place…
Even though it is a country town, why do I get a different car from my request like this? In the countryside, there are many cases where they don’t respond to your request for a replacement car.
It’s a long day, so I’ll split this day into two parts. Next time, I’ll show you the sightseeing part of this day.
