When travel plans go wrong…Counting our blessings…

The story of our French adventure continues and we are learning lots as we go and very grateful for God’s wisdom and guidance in lots of ways seen and unseen.

We arranged a taxi from the hotel on Saturday morning to take us to the local supermarket, Carrefour where we were told we could hire a car. That wouldn’t be possible in a UK supermarket!

Our taxi driver was lovely and was a fan of the TV series “Peaky Blinders” which is filmed in Birmingham and around our local area. He was fascinated that we lived only 10 minutes from there and was chatting away to us.

It was looking promising for the car hire until they found out we had a dog….no dogs allowed. Mmmm!!

Ok plan B. We look for a local hotel that can take us and the dog. There is one available but when we go to book the reservation is not available. It’s the weekend and busy. Feeling deflated, we look again and there is one other place with one room available …it will take pets so we book it quick for 2 nights. It says it’s a holiday village with apartments.

We call a local taxi company and lo and behold it’s the same driver who remembers us. He is sad about the dog and knows the hotel we have booked which is popular with Dutch and German visitors but not many English visitors so the language barrier may be difficult. He can come back for us in an hour and take us there.

We grab some lunch and have some divine wisdom…the taxi driver can take me to the hotel in the taxi with the dog and my husband can hire the car for him to travel in there. He goes back and explains the idea to the car hire lady..who is a different person than before and more helpful about the dog. She agrees that is a good plan and voila, she lets us have the car.

The taxi driver arrives and also agrees it’s a good plan. He helps me with the dog and the luggage and I arrive at the hotel and explain our situation. The man on reception understands my limited French (I’m praying for understanding as he doesn’t speak much English either). He says you have not booked a dog! I’m thinking oh no but it said it was pet friendly and there was no option on line to add a dog. No problem.. I just have to pay extra Euros for the dog. Phew!

The receptionist helps me to take all my luggage and the dog to our accommodation which turns out to be this amazing little semi detached house with a kitchen and garden area for the dog. Thank you Lord.

We have been so blessed with this accommodation. As the van has all our food we could travel back to the van, empty the fridge and bring all the food here so we have managed not to waste anything. It has been less stressful for all of us especially our dog Chino.

As Sunday was Father’s Day my husband even managed to have his favourite breakfast…eggs and bacon 😊

Today the van gets collected and taken away so we are waiting on the next steps. We have booked one more night here and the car hire until tomorrow. It’s one day at a time but at the moment we are enjoying this lovely part of France.