The Last Week

Today is October 3rd and I will be picking up Tiarra and her friend Penny at 1:30 at the train station in Saumur, about eight miles from our chateau, Champfreau.  It will be good to have them here.  Tiarra has made many trips to see us while we were in Italy at Lake Como and this will be her first trip to France.  It will be Penny's first to Europe ever.  Joan and I have saved some major Chateaux to visit and we're all looking forward to seeing Chateau de Chenonceau. It is the largest and most well known in the region.  It spans a complete river!  We will post some pictures after our visit.  Another special trip will be up to LeMans where we will visit the world famous race track and then tour the Musee Automobile, showcasing many of the past winners of the 24 Hours of LeMans!

Here is the final story on the coin fiasco.  (Please refer to my earlier post on coins from Michael). I took our last bag of coins into the grocery store that has the coin machine.  This time we had about 30 euros.  Easy enough. 

A far cry from the first visit which after gobbling up piles of coins it spit out a receipt for 157 euros, perhaps a world record. I'll check with the Guiness people at a later date.  At that point Joan and I proceeded to buy groceries amounting to 87euros.  One would think, at least I thought, that we would just receive credit for the remaining 70 euros. We thought wrong.  This transaction threw the clerk for a complete loop.  She had no idea how to handle the fact that we turned in far more coins than the purchases we made.  She, of course, started to discuss this dilemma with us in perfect French.  We responded in perfect English that we didn't have a clue of what she was saying. Considering us as the village idiots she abruptly got up (cashiers sit in France) and made her way to the head cashiers office.  After a laborious discussion it was decided to give up a gift card for the remaining 70 euros.  Of course the gift card was only for that supermarket. So an easy solution that took ten minutes to resolve.  Of course the next visit to the store resulted in the same scenario.  We turned in another huge bags of coins and got a receipt for second place in the Guiness book This time the clerk was very adamant that there was no way we were going to pay for the groceries with a receipt from the coin machine that was larger than the purchase.  I raised my voice an octave or so and indicated the easy solution, in perfect English again.  She stood her ground and was going to resolve this without interference or help from the head cashier.  I glared at her, she glared at me. She pointed to the long line of customers behind us. I finally  broke the impasse by leaning over her and grabbed another gift card and laid it down in front of her and said " I want to buy a gift card for the difference".  In perfect French she said to me, Aha, that is an intelligent solution, I'm happy to serve you." At least I think that is what she said.  However it could have been something slightly different like, "Aha, you are a perfect American ass...."  Who knows but the transaction was completed as we wanted it!!  I love the French people!