Detour

We went to Strasbourg on Monday. On the way there we hit construction, so a normal 1.5 hour trip turned into somewhere around 2 hours. Okay, okay... not so bad! The day in Strasbourg was quite lovely. We toured around, ate gelato, relaxed in a park, ate a delicious dinner, and after dinner decided to drive directly home (in order to have plenty of relax time before bed).

Did you know that Strasbourg is in France?!

Well...

A few miles from the French/German border we were directed off the usual road onto a detour. Apparently the French enjoy doing night road-work. Normally I appreciate when road-work is done at night, but on this fateful night I was not so happy with these construction workers.

Off we drove, following very clearly marked signs to Germany. We drove a quarter mile, a half mile, and then all of a sudden the detour signs just stopped. The long line of cars taking the detour began to thin out, and we began to wonder if we were just following Jean Pierre and his lovely wife Amelie on their Monday night ride through the countryside.

On and on we drove, seeing no signs, getting more confused by the minute. In what seemed like an age later, Nate broke down and said, "oh just use the phone's GPS and get directions home." If you recall, we were in France, so using the phone was a last resort (roaming charges!!!!).

I flipped on the phone and told it to drive us from our current location to Stuttgart. It thought... thought... and then told me that we were 1.5 hours from home. ARGH!!!!!!

The rest of the night involved confusing GPS directions, more wrong turns, almost running out of gas, but eventually making it home (I think our total drive was 3-3.5 hours).

On a positive note, at least we weren't stuck in a 3 hour traffic jam. But I don't think we'll be driving back to France anytime soon!



[Pictures from the trip are up in My Photo Gallery.]