Our final day in Leuven Tim went off to class and I packed up our bags and checked out of our room. Soon after Tim came striding into the hotel lobby and we were strapping on our packs to make the trek across town to the train station. We purchased our tickets at a well hidden ticket counter and then boarded the train to Brussels (about 20 minutes). We arrived at the airport and found our way to the Europcar car where we completed the paperwork, declined the GPS because we had detailed directions to our destination and were given the keys to a black Peugeot. After some time searching in the parking garage we found our vehicle, snapped a couple photos, piled our bags into the trunk and took a breath for here we embarked on a portion of the trip where we were driving ourselves through unfamiliar territory.
Admittedly, I was nervous because we were about to drive diagonally across the whole of France relying solely on Google Maps directions for guidance. After exiting the airport we followed the directions without incident for a few hours and were feeling pretty good. Soon we crossed over from Belgium to France and after a bit were approaching Paris. The directions were sending us around as to avoid the chaos of the big city. Then all of a sudden the traffic slowed to a crawl and then a complete stop. We were nearing our exit and figured if we could just get there we could keep on and arrive late but that wouldn't be too bad. The first hour passed and we had barely inched forward. The second hour passed and we were still sitting there. We saw multiple truckers who had given up, pulled over to the shoulder and settled in for the night. I couldn't blame them. Traffic finally crept up on our exit and we were relieved until we realized that it had been closed by a handful of motorcycle cops that we haphazardly telling people to move over out of the exit lane. There was no indication, in the previous 2+ hours that this section of road would be closed and there was no direction as to a detour route. As traffic started to pick up again we thought we could figure our way around the city using a recently purchased road map along with our original directions. Taking the most intuitive route (we thought) we were dumped directly into Paris and the drama began. The understatement of the
century is that Paris is poorly organized, signed and completely full of circular roads that will suck you in and get you hopelessly lost. Nothing is laid out on a grid and the roads are filled with vehicles driving bumper to bumper and turning, I kid you not, at random around corners, through lanes of traffic whenever suits
them. It is no exaggeration when I tell you that we were lost in Paris for more than two
hours. About to lose hope completely I said, "Honey, I'm lost and cannot see where we are on the map". As soon as the words were out of my mouth I spotted a sign that, on the map, appeared to connect to a road that would put us on the road we needed to continue on to La Rochelle. After that we stopped or fuel, a bathroom, a drink and an opportunity to take a breath and gather ourselves back together. I cannot tell you how uncomfortable those two hours were being continually turned around and seeing the number of the road we were on in several locations on the map. SIGH.
From there we were able to find the road that took us most of the way to La Rochelle. But realize that being stuck in traffic and the drama of being lost in Paris wasted almost five hours! At this point it was approaching midnight as we still had to drive across a large chunk of France to La Rochelle which is situated on the west coast. With my conference starting at 8am that same morning Tim made me put my seat back and try to sleep. Under normal circumstances I have trouble sleeping in cars but after all the craziness I was only able to doze for a few minutes here and there. Not too long after that we had to pull over so Tim could rest as well; being the driver he had the worst of the last five hours. An hour later we started on the road again and Tim drove us the rest of the way to La Rochelle. I tried to rest because I had a twelve hour day ahead of me thinking and talking about neuroscience but alas I was too wound up to sleep. At 6am we arrived in La Rochelle completely exhausted and terrorized by the previous day's chaos. After checking in we dragged our bags into, let me just say, the most uninspired hotel room of our entire trip. But at this point we didn't care. I was trying to pull myself together so I could face a long day at the conference. It was then, when checking over the conference details, I saw that I was to present my poster at the poster session at the end of the day. Perfect. This realization made me want to cry but I couldn't - I was too tired. :) Again I tried to lay down and rest for an hour but still couldn't sleep so I got up, showered and gathered my purse. Timmy drove me to the conference where I registered and slipped into the first talk of the day.
