Pregled posta

Marketing

This is one of the places where the memories from this stop will be with me a long time. This was my first stop on my on my little day of driving around. But the day had not really started well. After sending all my cohorts to the spa, doing a little house cleaning, I jumped in my car, noticed I was on empty and drove a few miles to the closest gas station. But I couldn’t get any of my credit cards to work in the card reader. And what was worse was the error message (in French) was different every time so I couldn’t really figure out what was wrong. So I decided to try to find another station – we were out in the country and services were often several miles/towns apart and it was not always apparent where they would be found. So I finally found another station but had the same problem.

I knew my cards were good – I’d been shopping with them – but they weren’t working in the gas stations and since none of the stations had attendants I couldn’t ask for help. At this point I was a little worried. The tank was really low, I wasn’t exactly sure where I could find another gas station and I was worried about running out of gas several kilometers from my home base. But I decided to try one more time. And I lucked out. I found a gas station that only accepted cash with a lady older than the hills who pumped my gas for me. I was on my way!

Note to Americans traveling in Europe – most European credit cards have a chip instead of a magnetic strip and you punch in a code to use them. Just about anything that is unattended – which is most gas stations, many transportation ticket kiosks, etc will not accept our magnetic strip cards. Plan ahead!

With a full tank of gas I drove to the top of a hill to see what was up there and of course found views stretching forever. I had pulled over along the road, near a chateau, and was checking it all out. A man came out of the chateau and invited me onto the grounds, telling me the view from the chateau gardens were the best. And they were. I wandered around there for several minutes looking at the miles of fertile valley, rolling hills and grapevines as far as the eye could see. I took a lot of photos – although they all are just slight variations of each other – there’s only so much difference between rows of grapes! As I was leaving I stopped to talk to the man. They were busy getting ready for the harvest that would start in a few days. He was very nice and interesting to talk to. And that little bit of kindness in inviting me onto the private grounds and allowing me to wander to my heart’s content went a very long way that day.

The is where the electric line from the pump house ends up...from here it powers the creek pump and a hideous night sensor light. This "real custom job" as my electrician put it, is on it's way out...as soon as they can get here and start work!