You mean you don't rent tents?

After a much longer train ride than we expected, we arrived in Avignon around 9:15pm. This meant that the buses that run to our campsite were done for the evening and we'd have to grab a cab.

We made our way to the taxi stand and waited...and waited. One swung up and the driver yelled something in French to us as I approached the window. I said the name of our campsite and received another bout of quick French questioning, to which, flustered, I replied with the name again. Waving his hand at me, the driver got out of the car, regarded me, then walked to the other man waiting for a cab and began to speak. The nice man gestured to us, I presume saying we were first, but the driver grabbed his bags and literally pushed him toward the cab door. The man merely shrugged at us and got in, leaving us with no taxi and no clue as to what the deal with the driver was.

Alright, I thought, we wait. But it wasn't looking good as in our 30 minutes there that was the only taxi we'd seen. I noticed a Hotel Ibis nearby (those things are Everywhere over here) and figured it couldn't hurt to go ask them to help us call a cab.

The lady at reception greeted us with disregard but offered her help in calling us a cab. She gave us directions on where to go to meet it...but of course they made absolutely no sense.

So back to the taxi stand we went. Now, Yohan had helped us look at the website for the campsite and said they close down for the night at 10pm...and we knew that time was getting close.

Finally a cab swung around and he pulled up to us and thank goodness asked if we were the ones from 'hotel ibis'. Yes!!

I told him the name of the campsight and he said he knew it exactly (or so I interpreted by his gestures and tone). He helped us into the cab and off we went, much relieved to be with someone who had a clue of what was going on.

Now, I'm pretty decent with maps, and I knew from the website of our campsite that we'd go to a big round-a-bout and turn right for our site. Well, we got to a roundabout and that didn't happen, and then we ended up going down a very dark and long road with the taxi till approaching €30. I tapped the man on the shoulder again and said the name, and immediately he slammed the breaks and hit himself on the forehead a few times, then swung the car back around. As I suspected we made a different turn at the round-a-bout and quickly pulled into the site.

Hurrying, we were able to make our way to the office and, again using hand gestures, tried to communicate that we wanted 2 nights and a (again with gestures /\ "tent". With nods and smiles the man gave us a map and a site number, had me write down some information, and took my passport sending us on our way.

"Well that was easy", I thought.

At camp site 33 we saw no tent...Jackie wandered to a mobile trailer but I was pretty positive that wasn't it. So back we went to the office and again I tried to explain we had no tent.

Eyes wide in disbelief, the man nodded in concern and shrugged his shoulders at us. "Uh oh" I thought.

Then, a brilliant idea popped into his head and he smiled, raising his right index finger in an 'ah-ha' moment. He scurried to the back of the building and audibly shuffled around for a few minutes before he emerged with...a tent!!! Wooohoo!

Saying thank you as many times as we could, we took the tent and made our way back to the site. By the looks of it, this was one of those magical tents (that we had continually heard about since we arrived in Europe) that spring open once you take them out of the bag. Great, until you have to figure out how to fold them back up.

Anyway, it didn't matter. We had a campsight for about €7 a night, we had a tent, and we were sleepy.

As expected the tent did magically spring up, smacking both of us as it rapidly expanded. We tossed our bags inside and went to the bathroom to clean up...and of course there was no toilet paper.

Well, considering what could have been it wasn't too bad for us. And it was definitely a funny experience.