DAY ONE DISASTER

After a brief stop in Boston where I joined Elaine at a reunion of the participants of her recent Vietnam adventure (pictures below), we arrived in London early Friday morning.  First job, of course, was to pick up our new Renault Megane Estate.  Little did we know that we were about to match and exceed the car rental woes of our trip to Florida last Thanksgiving.

Renault hires an agency at Heathrow to act as their agents in delivering and returning cars to customers.  We have dealt with them numerous times, and the father/son team is (are?) very nice.  Alas, the gasoline automatic transmission Megane that Renault delivered for me was rather a diesel manual transmission model.  Oh, oh!!  I drove a standard transmission car in driving school back in 1958 and have not been in one since then.  And now I am going to drive one for 32 days in the UK/IE on the wrong side of the road?  I don’t think so.  Naturally I refused delivery.

The agents tried to deal with Renault, but the buck passing between different divisions within Renault resulted in four hours of angst ridden waiting.  Finally they offered a seven-to-ten day rental after which they would deliver a new Renault to me.  Not bloody good enough!  I had no confidence that they would deliver it in a timely fashion.  I told Pierre, the Renault agent in France, that Renault had not delivered as promised and that I wanted a full refund.  He agreed and said he would arrange it.  I expect a hassle.

Meanwhile the father/son agents proposed a solution (independent from any connection with Renault).  They would rent me a similarly sized Volvo with an automatic transmission for the same price quoted me for the Renault.  I sense this was a good deal for them, but it was a good deal for us too.  A Volvo is a step up from a Renault, the car had only 6,000 miles on it, and the vacation would proceed immediately without worrying about changing out to another car at some point.  The deal was struck!

By this time it was too late for our planned time-killing sight-seeing trip to Hampton Court Palace but yet a bit too early to proceed to our nearby B&B for check-in.  We drove to the B&B (the GPS, or as the Brits refer it, the SatNav) got us there in good stead, and we enjoyed a beer or two at the pub next store.  At four PM, much the worse for wear, we checked in to the Oakwood B&B, settled in, and took naps.  Having enjoyed Vietnam food at the “reunion”, hefty snacks the airport waiting for the Virgin flight, and a full dinner and a breakfast on-board the six hour flight, Elaine wasn’t hungry come dinner time at 7 PM, so I ventured on foot down the street for fish and chips (excellent!) for myself.  I stopped at a little variety store and bought some waters for the room.  We were in bed and asleep by 8:30 PM.

After a good night’s rest (it is 6 AM Saturday now) we have put yesterday’s stressful experience behind us and will begin the vacation anew.  After breakfast, I think we will proceed to visit Hampton Court Palace after all (I do have pre-purchased admission tickets – why waste them!).  After a short visit there we will embark on the two hour (or so) ride to our first cottage rental in Chipping Campden.  More on that tomorrow with the first UK pictures.

Until then, here are the pictures of Elaine’s Vietnam reunion with our friend Mianne, the Lees, and the infamous Savin Hill girls.  Also present but not pictured were me, Mianne’s husband Bill, and Joe & Fran Murphy who had been scheduled to be on the trip but had to cancel.