Car hire, Marseille, Day 14

“And so it goes….” (Kurt Vonnegut). Down to the breakfast scene again. A nice vibe. Pretty significant occupancy at the hotel by the looks of things. We discuss the Top Gear type motoring quest before us tomorrow, in terms of driving the rental car from here to our Marseille hotel, organising parking for the vehicle in Marseille and then dropping off the funky eco centric fun wagon to the hire car bay at the airport the following day during peak hour traffic. Nup, we’re not taking this on, particularly after yesterday (we’re not even mentioning the eccentricities of driving in places like Nice and Marseille). We decide we are going to hand the hire car back and train it, bullet style, to Marseille. After breakfast we head to the station. We purchase 2 tics, first class (don’t want to be interfered with by itinerant gypsies) to Marseille at 12 tomorrow. Done. Now the hire car. We head to the hire car office and explain what we are going to do. No probs. During the course of our little chat with a young female car hire officer, a guy comes in wielding a pram saying that his hire car had to be towed to a garage. He looked pretty reserved until another young female hire car officer asked a few questions. He then slammed the counter, and started yelling like a stuck pig. The icicles in the office started to form and its 26 degrees outside. Upon witnessing this customer outburst, our car hire officer runs out to look for a gendame. She comes back, they are out to lunch. With all the confusion still going on, she gestures us to move to the office door to try and concentrate. Upon doing this she bursts into tears and we attempt to console her outside the office on the pavement. The dude causing the scene promptly grabs his pram and strolls out and away. After a few minutes we regroup in the office and sort out how we are going to the get rental from the carpark (that we are now paying for on a daily basis) down through the narrow streets of Nice to the hire car garage. Up to the carpark. We negotiate the path to the hire car garage. Done. Back at 2:30pm we notice. Nice siesta? On to the promenade for some lunch. Back to the car rental scene. A few Euros paid and its all done. After ingesting quite a bit of water I head for a urination station. We discover some sort of excretion paradise in a public park area. Down a few stairs and I notice a woman supervising this little bathroom type oasis taking .50 euros per_and watering some plants. A bizarre but tranquil scene. Time for some more walking. I pick up a Nice T and we walk around exploring the outer reaches of the Nice Centre. Suns out. Heaps of jets coming into Nice airport every 3 mins. This place is set to really explode in a few weeks. Back to the hotel. Out to dinner at one of the hundreds of eateries in Nice. A cruisey couple of days after some fairly structured exploration at Dubai, London and Paris. Really looking forward to Venice day after tomorrow. I believe they started building it in the seventh century. In the meantime, Marseille beckons tomorrow.