Le Franco Phoney

Last week, I ended an eleven-day road trip that took me through central France and onto the West coast to visit friends, followed by a quick drive back to La Clusaz. Some of the places were amazing, including the giant underground cave involving a boat ride on an underground lake to get there; ancient caveman paintings; camping metres away from Europe’s largest sand dune; and limestone rock, carved to create entire villages on cliff-faces. I’ll write in more detail about them just as soon as I’ve sorted out my French car insurance which is a whole separate story in itself.

Basically, if you change insurers, you have to give your existing insurer notice through a signed letter two months before you want your contract with them to ends. I still haven’t figured out if this is only possible when the contract is due to end or not, as I was using the alternative way of ending a contract: you have a twenty-day window when your contract is due to expire but you still have to write to them via certified mail to change insurers. Now, my old insurer has written to me to tell me that I can’t change insurers because I didn’t write in the specified twenty-day gap. However, my new insurer says I can because the date on the envelope is stamped as sent on the 20th July, whereas my old insurer tells me I needed to write within twenty days of the 9th of July (the date d’édition de l’avis d’échéance – the date of expiry). This in itself makes no sense as my insurance was set to run out on the 31st August. I’m hoping that the new insurer is correct in that the twenty days commences from the date stamped on the envelope, as I did change insurance during this period. Either way, I’ll be having a fun morning of speaking French and not understanding the responses. Actually, that’s presuming any of the insurance agencies are open: I heard they’re closed on Monday mornings.

Below is a map with the places we stayed in during each night of the road trip (we went anticlockwise). I’ll be adding photos and stories to it in the coming days. And maybe some photos from the Annecy Fete du Lac fireworks display on Saturday night (it included love-heart-shaped fireworks…awwww).