Foreign Perspectives

We were a little bit optimistic about how long it would take to do everything this morning but managed to be driving away from the dealership around 3pm which was pretty good going on the whole.

As you might expect, Credit Agricole was the worst. It took almost an entire hour from when we went in the door until we walked out with the bank cheque. That was with only two people in front of us too!

We dropped off the hire car next before heading over to organise the insurance at MAAF. Funnily enough, it turned out to be somewhat easier to do than it was doing the whole lot in English had been for the Alto. We’ve to get a statement from the old insurance company but otherwise that’s it. Well, we have to attempt to get a statement from the old insurance company I should say as they’ve pretty much completely ignored us over the last four months so it might not be quite so simple.

By then it was after 1200 so we had lunch before going on to the car dealership. Since we didn’t have any proof of address with us they seemed to be able to carry on without it which has us wondering why they asked for it in the first place, though we often wonder that in France. Having a leaf through what’s included in the price we’ve paid it looks like the overall price is lower than it was on the Internet as they’ve included a few substantial things that weren’t in the online price and, of course, we’d not to pay for hotels, petrol and tolls between here and Paris either.

Anyway, our little car is doing quite nicely. Between the low price of diesel and the 50+mpg that it gets we’ll likely not even have to top it up ’til well into next week.