Road Trip

My good friend Barb (we played soccer together at Michigan - many, many years ago) invited me to Eindhoven to celebrate Carnival with her and her family. I eagerly accepted and plotted my travel to the Netherlands. In keeping with the blog theme (it does have Adventure in the title), I ended up deciding to drive. With my dog. Oh Yeah.

The trunk is packed with essentials. You'll see Cheerios (for the girls), wine (for the adults) and the costume bags.

Tucker hops in and literally will not get out of the car even though we weren't leaving for 10 minutes.

I thought this was a great sign on the road because I like the picture. You probably can't tell but the picture for the EuroTunnel is a car inside a train.

The trip itself is relatively simple - about the same distance I'd drive when going from Chicago to Michigan for a weekend. This just involved crossing three countries and a body of water rather than navigating around Lake Michigan and through a few states. Tucker was excited for about the first hour and then decided he had enough.

We make it to the EuroTunnel and clear customs. Tucker proudly passed the checkpoint and is ready to get to France. Here we approach the entrace to the train. We go in the far door with keeps us on the bottom level - it's a double decker car train.

Driving up to the front of the train.

Inside the train and under the English Channel.

We made it to France! (Sorry, I missed the sign so you are stuck with highway indicators). I left my house at 10AM and was in France with my car by 12:20. Way cool.

The great thing about French roads is that everyone is religious about staying in the right lane except to pass. My mother and her lead foot would love it. My father on the other hand would get honked at a lot. And yes, to answer your question, I had to switch from driving on the left side to driving on the right side. The other great thing about the French is that the speed limit is 130 km/h.

Can't do the conversion in your head? That's 85 mph.

Since I was cruising right along - I made it to Belgium in no time.

And then to the Netherlands. Travel time was around 5 hours until I got lost about 2 miles from my final destination. I know. Pathetic. I think it is time to invest in a GPS.

And so ends the Friday of my weekend - Sat and Sun posts to come shortly.....