Driving to France, and Tollways

It took eight hours to drive from La Spezia, Italy to Toulouse, France and it should be a crime to drive as fast as we did past Genoa, Monaco, Nice, Cannes, Aix-en Provence, Arles, Avignon, Nimes, and Montpellier. In fact, driving laws were probably broken--and tickets may still be en route--since speed cameras were added along the highway since the TomTom lady's latest software update. So, although she warned you in Austria every time you approached a speed camera, she doesn't know about the ones in France....and if you're driving eight hours with a sour stomach and the promise of a dear friend and a private bathroom at the end, you won't notice the prominent white radar signs (pictured below) announcing the cameras to citizens who may shutdown the roads with truck loads of rotten tomatoes if not given fair warning.



Below is a picture of Levanto, Italy which we saw from a bridge while traveling at about 130km (80 miles) per hour, and it clearly doesn't do the area justice. We also tried to take a picture of the sliver of Monaco we saw which consisted of a left-curving dark tunnel with blue and gold running lights. That picture didn't turn out at all--as one might have guessed even before my husband told me it was a waste of time. He took the picture anyway after I sighed and said he didn't need to....which was the only way I could guarantee he would.



Most of the day, we saw fields and the occasional hill, but nothing of the French Riviera which would have been really upsetting had we not seen it on our honeymoon over 13 years ago. What was more upsetting was the abundance of tolls which stopped our progress every five feet (slight exaggeration), and pushed our arrival time back by at least ten minutes each time. I tried to stay calm, but I couldn't help cursing the inefficiency of paying a toll, taking a ticket five minutes later, turning in the toll ticket within the hour, then paying another toll a few minutes after that.

My husband thought my railing about the toll inefficiency had less to do with the tolls, and more to do with missing a dear friend, and he was probably right because although you've heard the term, "No man is an island," you may not know that no family is an island either. After one month of interacting with locals using nothing more than body language and the vocabulary of a two year old, we were desperate to have a conversation that started with, "What do you think of" or "How is your father doing?" rather than "May I have". In fact, one month is the maximum our family could spend drifting from place to place without seeing the look of excitement on people's faces as we arrived or sadness as we drove away.

Traffic wasn't terrible until we hit Montpellier during rush hour, but it only amounted to about 11 miles of crawling before we sped-up again. We traveled on a Thursday, which is key, because something we learned early-on is that you never want to drive on the highways in France in the summer on a Saturday. Never. Really.

Toll Aside (avoid the below unless you plan to travel the European Highway System in the near future, or you have an unsurpressible urge to be bored to tears):

We visited three countries in Europe which required a toll sticker (called a "vignette" in all three countries) be purchased and affixed to the windshield before entering the country's tollway system: Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia. If you stop at a gas station near the border, you can get one without a problem even if you're in one country asking for another country's sticker. If you don't have a vignette stuck to your windshield (laying it on the dashboard is not good enough), you are in deep, deep......um....trouble when the police stop you. In Switzerland, we had no choice but to buy a yearly sticker; in Austria we bought a monthly sticker; and in Slovenia, we bought a sticker which was good for only a week. I can't recall the exact price, but it ranged from 20 to 30 Euros for each country which is money well spent when you realize you could be fined $200 for a failure to buy the sticker, depending on the country. The TomTom lady gives you the option to avoid the toll system, but don't try this without putting passengers in the back seat on a Dramamine IV drip.

In any event, a good guide book like Rick Steves' will have up-to-date information on vignette prices, procedures, and fines--in case you want to use the system without purchasing a vignette. It may also give you the proper translation for "I'm a foreigner and I really don't think I should have to pay for your roads," as well as "May I make one phone call to my lawyer before you take me into custody?" Now, I'm not sure that they'd actually arrest you, but it is my humble opinion that you should not risk it.

Although you pay to use the highway in Austria, you will pay an additional fee if you travel through the longer tunnels, and this brings me to an important point: If you are claustrophobic, or can imagine a circumstance where you could develop claustrophobia, or if there is even the slightest chance you may carry the claustrophobic gene, stay off the Austrian highways--especially the route between Brand and Reutte. The following is a slight exaggeration: we spent nearly 40% of our time in and out of tunnels on this route. The longest tunnel was about 21,000 feet and took three songs to traverse--one of which was a John Lennon song and I only mention this so you know how long that can take. It is also long enough to have a conversation about whether it was the tunnel between Italy and Switzerland or Italy and France where a major crash caused a raging fire and mass casualties a few years back. This is about the time you will notice the emergency exit signs which are green with a white cartoon man chasing an arrow.

Italy and France do not require you to purchase a vignette, but if you travel our route along the northwestern coast of Italy and the southeastern coast of France, have a dependable credit card and/or about 100 Euros at the ready for toll plazas in case the machine doesn't take your credit card which--as I mentioned in the previous post--happens 10 percent of the time.

© 2012 Nicole Wirth
Author of:  Letters to Salthill