Road Trip Day 2 – Saint Omer to Dijon. (Driving Straight Through Paris Was Probably A Mistake….)

This post is day two of the 2025 road trip series, you can see read about the previous day HERE.

Childhood Memories of European Road Trips

When I was a kid, my family used to spend three weeks every summer driving our VW Camper Van around Europe.  Over the years we went all over, Gibraltar, Greece, Czechoslovakia (as it was), East Germany, Denmark, Sicily.  If there was a road to it, we probably drove there.

But we always, and I mean always, stayed at Saint Omer for our final night on the continent and we always stayed at the same campsite.  We used to call it Renee’s as the owner looked just like the guy from the TV show ‘’Allo ‘Allo’.  Maybe that is why I was drawn to this place for our first night, maybe it was close to the ferry or maybe it was close to my heart.

The coming days, I hoped, would make memories for me and the kids to match the happy family memories that I still hold of those trips over 40 years ago.  I hope Renee is doing well, but I suspect he will be around 115 years old or so now.

Our room at the Auberge Du Colombier was really comfortable and helped us get a bloody good sleep under our belts, essential for a long day ahead of sitting on our backsides.  We showered and dressed and then headed across the courtyard to the breakfast room where we had a few big tasks ahead of us.

We had to decide on our route down to Dijon and speak to the manager about the ‘double booking situation’ that would, in the long run, turn into a ‘double booking drama’ that could have been spread over three seasons on Netflix.  I wont dwell on it, but we could only speak to a cleaner in the self service breakfast room, no manager wanted to show up, and we were told it was all in hand and would be sorted.  

It was, eventually, about 4 months later after I eventually managed to pin a human down from hotels.com.  It turned out that when I booked the room, I’d missed the final letter off my email address and, somehow, the booking had been attached to a real person with that exact account. What are the odds?

We had a lovely breakfast, meats and cheeses with bread and butter and conserves and Pilgrims coffee. After our second helpings we were joined by another English family and their children but they didn’t respond to polite conversation and good morning nods which, by British breakfast standards, is basically an act of war,  so we focused on the route planning instead.

The option was to get on the motorway and move south as quickly as we possibly could or take our time and go down the local roads to take in the sights and sounds of France.  We unanimously decided that the side roads would be nicer and more of an experience and that, as we were going to be passing Paris, it would be rude not to pop in and take a look to see what all the fuss was about.

It was a Monday morning and the world seemed happy.  The sky was a perfect blue, the roads were open and the streets of Saint Omer were quiet, with just the odd cat or chunky pigeon being the only ones to break the lines of the empty streets.

It was around lunchtime when we hit the suburbs of Paris and they seemed to go on for a surprisingly long time before we eventually saw the Eiffel Tower poking up proudly and arrogantly below the tower blocks that seemed almost embarrassed about how plain they looked in comparison.

I’ve always found Paris a little underwhelming, so much graffiti, so much dirt and so many cars that look like that have just been rescued from the side of a racing circuit.  It’s almost as if Parisians have decided it is impossible to not crash into other cars and so why have a nice one?

We made our way along the north bank of the Seine and, almost by accident, found ourselves at the Jardins du Trocadero so we dropped down and made our way across the Pont d’Iéna and BANG, there we were, at the Eiffel Tower.

There was a tour bus pretty much piggybacking the back of my car and I was under pressure. I can’t lie, I panicked.  I followed the bus lane that took us directly underneath the bloody tower!

I said to the kids, ‘Make sure you take loads of photos as this is the most expensive 400 yards of road I will ever drive down’.  I spent the next 4 months at home waiting for the fine to come through, but I got away with it.  That was how we ended up directly underneath one of the most famous man-made structures on the planet.

We never once found a place to park up and have a bit of a walk about and so we just drove around Paris like the famous scene from National Lampoon’s European Vacation.  We drove around and around the Arc de Triomphe but because we wanted to, not because we got stuck on the wrong lane.  The driving was hectic but if you kept going and showed no fear, you were fine. 

We made our way around the Place de la Concorde but never saw a single plane. Deciding we were filled to the brim with Paris, we decided to head out of town.  Out of nowhere, the boy child piped up saying that it would have been nice to see the Parc des Princes and as I was in the middle of explaining that it was too late, we were on the main road out of town and had a lot of road to cover, when there was a bloody great big sign on the very next junction pointing out the stadium of Paris Saint Germain.

It was a sign, literally, and so we followed it and managed to find a car park space pretty much on top of one of the turnstile, right next door to the club shop.  I checked with a taxi driver, who was parked up and coolly smoking Gauloises, with his foot on the front tyre of his car.  “Park where you want my friend” he said with a Gallic shrug, “they don’t want to upset tourists and so the won’t fine you with an English number plate”.  I was the happiest Dad driver in Europe and he was the coolest French guy.

The megastore covered two floors and had a theme park style one way walking system to maximise the number of PSG products you had to take in before being allowed to escape.

We asked a member of staff if there was a toilet available and they looked at us as if we had asked if there was a four headed dog that we could look at.  Maybe it was just that our French was really poor, but I think they were more hoping that they would be able to shift their 2023 away shirts to us in the sale.  I could have parked for 4 weeks for the price of a polyester t-shirt and so we marched the remaining 4 miles around the maze and made our way out.

We would have stopped for a coffee or a soft drink and pastry before setting off and walked a few blocks either direction but nothing was open. Nothing.  So we jumped in the car, fired up the afterburners and made our way on to the A6, the Autoroute du Soleil.

To be continued -> Motorway services, disappointing McDonalds and the French city that completely stole our hearts.