Bienvenue en France, maintenant laisse-moi tranquille

Now that our departure date is imminent, I’ve begun tying up some loose logistical ends: buying bus tickets to Galway from the Dublin airport, for example, and figuring walking directions to our first night’s lodging. I admire people who can just strap on a backpack and wing it, but that’s not me. I want to know where I’m staying, how I’ll get there, and even what it looks like. Google maps, especially its street view function, has made this kind of reconnaissance easy.

For our several night stay in Marseille I rented an Airbnb apartment, all accomplished online of course, without any real communication with the apartment’s host. At some point I received a confirmation email that included a link to find instructions for how to get in the apartment after we arrive. I hadn’t clicked until today and had assumed we would get a phone number to reach someone who would meet us and hand over the keys. Alas, I am so old skool.

The link actually leads to a QR code which directs my phone to yet another site where I enter a rental ID code. Doing this unlocks a series of step-by-step instructions (in French) with photos explaining how we’ll get in the apartment. Despite years of high school and college French I found plenty of unfamiliar words but with the help of google translate, I thought I had it pieced together: retrieve the apartment keys (les clés) hanging from a hook (accroché) on a railing (des rambardes) inside a nearby pharmacy. Then use this xxxxxx code to open the main building entry (l’entrée de l’immeuble), go up elevator A, and use the keys on the apartment door to the left (porte gauche).  

It all seemed to make sense except that pharmacy part seemed a little weird – does the AirBNB host have an agreement with the pharmacy staff? I wondered, and what happens if you arrive after the pharmacy closes?

Suddenly it dawned on me. What I’m supposed to notice in the photo of the pharmacy isn’t the pharmacy itself, but the metal railing at street side from which dangles a real-estate looking lockbox. That’s where we’ll find the apartment keys. Not in the pharmacy but on the railing outside (à côté de) the pharmacy.

Are you kidding me? I thought. But the little lockbox appears even on google street view (I can see another one on the corner across from ‘ours’) so it must be their usual thing. Hey, I’m an introvert myself so I can appreciate some level of people-avoidance, but really? This is how they say welcome to our lovely apartment?

This mysterious and elaborate sequence strikes me as unnecessarily Get Smart-ish but okay, I can follow instructions. Yet I still have questions. Do I need a code for the lockbox? If so, what is it? If not, can’t any passerby remove the key I’ll be so desperate to retrieve? I went back and read the reviews from others who have rented this apartment, and none of them reported problems getting inside. Still, I worry. But for now, I’ll leave this little loose end untied.

Close Call

We live in an area with an extensive network of bicycle trails, and we take advantage of them regularly. The Hubs and I are out there several times per week, sometimes together, but often with other friends or by ourselves. When the pandemic hit, the good/bad news (depending on your perspective) is that people dusted off their old bikes or hikers and hit the trails, eager to escape the confines of indoor Zoom work and classes. Good that we have such a great outdoors resource for folks, but yikes–we were swarmed by inexperienced new riders and walkers not knowing the rules of the road. Despite posted guidelines, as well as a fleet of volunteer bike patrollers, it has gotten treacherous out there: walking phone zombies wandering cluelessly into oncoming bike traffic, bikers not knowing how to pass or get passed and, worst of all, new e-bikes speeding along with little control.

We’d escaped injury all this time until this weekend when the Hubs got taken out by an e-biker. The e-biker (red arrow) took a fast and wide turn from a side trail onto the busy main one and ended up in the wrong lane just as the Hubs approached (blue arrow). The Hubs yelled and swerved but the e-bike rider panicked and wham, the Hubs went flying ass over handlebars.  

I’ll skip lots of crazy details, but I ended up driving frantically round the area trying to find the Hubs who I thought was walking 15 miles home (in bike shoes) with his damaged bike and body. I confess that during this search, I thought oh no, what about our vacation? but due credit to me, I didn’t think of this until an hour in. I was plenty freaked out wondering where he was and how badly he was hurt (one crazy detail: no phone).

Things have turned out more or less OK. The Hubs has plenty of road rash, bruises, and stiff muscles but nothing broken or seriously sprained. The e-bike rider (not a young whippersnapper but a guy around our age) got patched up too, has admitted responsibility, and vows to make things right. 

And our vacation is still a go!

3-D What?

Supposedly, it’s much easier these days to pay your way as you navigate other countries and currencies.

I remember back when you might visit your bank to get a stack of Traveller's Cheques before leaving town. There was some ceremony in this excursion which, along with the British spellings of Traveller and cheque, imparted a frisson of foreign travel anticipation. At the bank you’d sign each cheque in one space as a teller watched. Later, when you wanted to use one to pay for a swank dinner at a Paris bistro, you’d sign again in another space on your cheque as your waiter watched. If the two signatures matched, the restaurateur had a guarantee of sorts that the issuing bank would honor the cheque. They came in a variety of currency types, were no good unless signed, and could be replaced if stolen. All in all, a decent system for low-risk cash carrying abroad. How quaint.

Or course Traveller’s Cheques went by the wayside as credit & debit cards and ATMs became prevalent. Now you can probably just point your phone at a screen or do some crypto-bit-coin thing I will never understand.

Considering the worldwide integrated banking network underlying such advanced technologies, you’d think there’d be no more barriers left to paying for your vacation. But you’d be wrong. I discovered this when trying to pay the deposit for the Provence area cycling portion of our upcoming trip. The bike tour company issued an invoice through a third-party online payment outfit which works like countless others:  enter your credit card info and click the submit button. Except when I clicked ‘submit’ the system responded within a nano-second with a rejection – so fast it was clear that the transaction info didn’t even make it to my credit card issuer (CCI) for consideration. I tried several times and with a different credit card, all with the same result.

After lots (lots!) of pinging around from bike tour company, to my CCI, to google, and back again, I discovered that most of Europe has implemented a 3-D Secure protocol for authenticating online credit card transactions.  As the French guy from the bike tour company told me Ze American credit cards – they don’t so much work. I confirmed this assessment by googling and finding many exasperated Americans asking the same questions I was. 

I solved my immediate problem by wiring our deposit directly to the tour company’s bank (sheesh, talk about old school) and have since spent frustrating hours wrangling with my current CCI whose credit card, by the way, is much ballyhooed as being the best for foreign travel. They swear it’s not their fault and that their card is 3D compliant but there is no mistaking the failed transaction on the screen shot the bike tour operator sent me:  3D Enrolé?  Non

As far as I know, 3D secure applies only to online transactions so I assume there will be no issue using our credit card real-time abroad. Even so, I’m getting a back-up card (ahem good job on the 3D thing, Amex). Navigating my CCI’s customer service phone system from afar is not the kind of navigating I want to do.