Our plan is to spend our last morning in Kos sightseeing at the Asklepieion (ancient hospital), then meet our friend Dionissis who is coming in on the ferry from Rhodos that morning. But by the time we've checked out of the boat, parked our bags, had a reviving OJ, walked into the main harbour looking for the terminus for the tourist train to the Asklepieion, only to find it half way back to the marina, Dionissis has arrived, so we meet up with him and go to have lunch together. Dionissis gives us both a lift to his favourite restaurant on the back of his motorbike (serially rather than together), so we both have the fun of speeding through the streets of Kos on a bike with Tassie plates.
Spend some time with Dionissis after lunch, having a look at his boat Hector, then it is time to retrieve our luggage and start our transit to France.
The transit involves multiple steps, taxi from the marina to the ferry terminal, ferry from Kos to Bodrum, taxi to the hotel, night in hotel, taxi to airport, 6am flight to Istanbul, pause in Istanbul, flight to Toulouse, where we will pick up our Eurolease car and commence the French leg of our holidays. We are dreading it somewhat, as complex trips can be traumatic, especially if something doesn't go to plan. But it is in fact pretty smooth, with a number of highlights and only a few lowlights. Getting out of Greece is harder than it needs to be, waiting for ages for the attention of the Kos Marina staff to get a taxi ordered, and ridiculous bureaucratic processes to catch the ferry (see last blog). In Turkey our taxi gets caught in a major traffic snarl, but the driver manages to edge through to our turn off and find the hotel we booked for our overnight stay.
We selected the hotel from a website which, we thought, had told us that the hotel was close to the airport. Discover when we get there that we are only on the outskirts of Bodrum and still 40km from the airport. But the very helpful staff offer to drive us to the airport so we don't have to worry about whether a taxi will arrive on time (or at all), and also provide a meal at the hotel so we are able to get to bed early and diminish the pain of having to get up at 4am.
The long drive to the airport goes without a hitch and we enjoy two more very pleasant flights with Turkish Airlines, with a pleasant interlude in their Business Class lounge in Istanbul, one of the best lounges we've ever experienced. Excellent food and time to doze on both flights, so we arrive quite fresh and ready to tackle France.
Phone up the Eurolease depot who pick us up, drive us the short trip to their depot, ask us to sign a couple of pieces of paper, then hand over the keys to our brand new chocolate coloured Renault Modus. As usual I do the driving when we first start, and after a couple of circuits of the car park, we are off. We follow the Eurolease directions to the nearest fuel station, fill up the car, then are guided by the trusty satnav systems on our phones around the ring road that skirts Toulouse, down the motorway to Carcassonne where we exit and drive through Trebes, then on to Millepetit, which isn't on the GPS, but which we locate by trial and error on the side lanes near the Canal du Midi. We meet the owners of the house we're staying in, get settled in, drive back to Trebes for a meal and then it's time to collapse into bed, knowing that we will wake to the sight out our bedroom window of boats going past on the canal.
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