Organized as we are, we were looking for a place to stay tonight on the first day of our mega road trip from Tating to Dublin, about 16 hours drive, not counting the ferry, via Germany, the Netherland, Belgium and France. We found a room for 32 euro and rang ahead to make sure they had a wheelchair accessible room. The person on the other side of the line didn’t speak German, English or Spanish. Which is when my better half came to the rescue (as so many times before). She had studied French in school. I looked up the word for ‘wheelchair’ on Google Translate and together we managed to book the room. We thought.

Then I looked up the comments on the hotel and it had everything from unwanted ‘animals’ to staff ‘only’ speaking French!

When we arrived, after a long 9-hours drive, the hotel was closed and when I had  managed to book us a room (‘no reservation found’) with a credit card on a machine at the door, the room was too small to accommodate a wheelchair!

But then – a really friendly young woman appeared out of nowhere, showed us a wheelchair-friendly room, and cancelled the first one. All in French, of course. The room was nice and clean and the beds were great with white crisp sheets of linen.

Vive la France!