An Ode to Maps

I love maps. Those of you who have known me longer and have heard me talk about maps may actually call it more of an obcession. Not the kind that gets people thrown into padded rooms but a healthy love. I have been asked what I think this stems from and the best explanation I could come up with is that no matter where you are, with a map, you know where you are.

Not that I need to always know where I am. I'm perfectly happy wandering and getting lost. As long as I know that I CAN know where I am at the flip of a page. But I digress...

Today we left the Luberon. We were going to drive to Montpellier, where we were catching a train to Barcelona. The drive was going to be beautiful and relaxing, we would meander through villages and gaze at vinyards and poppy fields. We were going to avoid the main, impersonal multi-lane highways.

We'd heard about the trecherous paths woven by Provencal roads. But we weren't worried - we had map #113 to lead us. It was detailed. Very, very detailed. And it worked like gangbusters until we got to Cavaillon.

Once we got there, things became a bit less clear. There was the map, which had detailed drawing of the road we were on, complete with numbers. Then there was the road we were on. Which had nothing to do with the very clear and detailed map. The numbers on the map didn't exist in real life. Neither did the curves of the road. Or the road itself. So we did what any person with a map that no longer works does - we drove on, and hoped to see something, anything that would resemble reality.

There was once a theory where I lived in New Jersey, that if you were lost, all you had to do is keep driving and you would eventually hit a highway that would lead you to your destination. We applied it here, in the south of France and, like all good theories, it worked. In Cavaillon, and again on a round-about somewhere near Nimes, and a third time as we neared Montpellier, where construction had made a the road, mapped or otherwise, inaccessible.

Arriving in Montpellier we congratulated ourselves on our stellar navigational skills. We got some lunch and relaxed, eased in the thought that we had 2 hours before our train, and nowhere to go. We were scott free. We had had been tested and had persevered. We were optimistic. We decided to get some gas for the car. We were idiots.

I won't hurt you, or myself, by reliving what happened next. Suffice it to say, it involved a gas station some 10 miles outside of town, automated pumps that didn't work, automated credit card pads that didn't read our credit cards, a wrong turn down a one-way street, and a 180 turn which involved Bree driving backwards out of an unattended parking garage, "The French Connection"-style. The map, with its well demarkated roads that didn't exist, was tossed on the floor. We had reached the end of the line...

Fast forward (spoiler alert)...

But…we made it. After a LONG train ride to Barcelona, we decided not to tempt fate with more map reading. We caught a cab, the 1000 feet to our hotel.