4:10am

Once again Wolfram had to wake up extremely early on a vacation morning. This time for a good reason (as always) as we had to drive 1000 km to Viens, in the Luberon, in the South of France.

This weekend is rated as “black” by Bison Fute, the French organization managing traffic. Simply it’s the weekend when the people who took vacation in July are driving back up from the South of France and those who are taking vacation in August (like us) are going down. This means thousands or hundreds of thousands of cars on the French highways translating into gigantic traffic jams.

Thus we had to leave as early as possible to beat the crowd. And we did. At 4:10am we left the house and started our long drive to the sun.

5am

We’re crossing the French border. Highway is pretty much empty, but who would be driving at 5am on a Saturday morning?

6am

First stop and first coffee for Wolfram. Apparently it was surprisingly good for a coffee from a vending machine. I couldn’t tell as I don’t drink coffee but the Starbuck’s fan behind the wheel was happy.

7am

We’re passing by Reims enjoying the new ring around the city. All empty and big fun as the GPS couldn’t figure out where we were. When the map of the GPS was put together there were fields there, not a highway.

Emilie has given me some advice on how to get to Lyon with the minimum traffic and the best roads. Going via Reims was one, taking the A39 was another one. It’s 20km longer to take the A39 than the A6 but it’s all empty and you avoid the traffic coming from Paris. And she was right. In this “black” Saturday we drove all the way from Brussels to Lyon without a single traffic jam!

11:45am

We are at the toll station of the A7. Highway A7, also known as “Autoroute du soleil” is THE highway to go to the south of France. From Lyon it takes you to Provence directly.

We are now only 250km away from our vacation destination. And of course shortly after we entered the A7, the traffic became very dense, extremely dense and we experienced the first “traffic en accordeon” i.e. on/off, slower/faster drive. Let the fun begin.

1:10pm

We’re done with our improvised picnic on the parking lot of a service area. Traffic was getting denser and denser and we were hungry. After all we woke up at 3am and have been talking about lunch since 10:30am. If we have to be stuck in traffic let it be with a full stomach.

I had promised Wolfram we would stop in a nice service area and have a picnic on a blanket. Well that did not happened because the service area was packed with people. Luckily I spotted a lady walking back to her car and we waited for her to leave to park there. We ate next to the car, watching this madness around us.

Feeling better we hit the road again, ready to face the A7 and at least 50km of accordion drive.

2:10pm

We’ve been driving for 1 hour and successfully completed 50km… it’s going to take forever.

4pm

We’re leaving the highway, finally, after what felt the longest 150 km ever.

5pm

Here we are, we’ve arrived in Viens, very small village from the Luberon. We parked the car in the parking lot outside the village. The house is in the village which is pedestrian. Actually given the width of most streets, there is no way a car can get through.  My parents were getting the keys so we waited a bit until we could access the house.

After emptying the car, touring the house, taking a shower and changing to summer outfits, we’re ready to start our vacation with a glass of rose wine.

Now vacations can start!