The hotel
It was a gorgeous hotel with a little balcony over-looking the sea and across to Saint Tropez, and a cosy little French feel, although all the service expected of a Best Western. After the stress of getting ourselves packed and moved, we wandered into the gorgeous town and felt ourselves relaxing. On our wanders, we found L’Amiral, a beautiful restaurant in the marina which was pretty pricey but we decided to treat ourselves and booked it for that evening. We wandered back to our hotel and went down to the pool and read our books. Feeling suitably relaxed we got ready for dinner and walked back up to the marina. The meal was amazing! We had such a gorgeous meal, the service was brilliant and we truly relaxed and forgot all about our car nightmare.
The next morning we opened the curtains to torrential rain. The view across the water was nothing but grey and Saint Tropez had disappeared! We read in our room for a while and by lunchtime it had totally cleared up and was blazing sunshine again. We walked back into the town and found a nice restaurant for dinner that evening. Looking for somewhere to have lunch in the meantime, we went to Cafe Maxime for lunch and it was brilliant. My husband had a burger and I had a chicken burger – the best I’ve ever eaten!! That evening we wandered back and walked through the beautiful cobbled streets in Sainte-Maxime and stopped off for a lovely Italian meal.
Where is our car?!
Monday morning we woke up and we got straight on the phone to our insurance company and asked them to call the garage and make sure they looked at our car first thing. We had worked out that if we left by Monday lunchtime at the latest and drove all through the day and night, we might just make it home in time for work on the Tuesday. Nothing. We kept checking and by lunchtime it was clear they hadn’t looked at the car let alone fixed it. We spoke to our insurance company who then decided that they would buy us both flights from Nice back to Birmingham International that evening, and they would pay for one of us to return another time to collect the car and drive it home. It wasn’t ideal but they were so good and covered the flights as well as the hotel and taxis. The taxi to Nice airport on its own was 200 Euros!
So once again we packed up (which was slightly trickier now that we had all our luggage from the car to pack into two bags for the plane!) and we were waiting for our taxi at 4:30pm when we received a call from the insurance company. The garage had finally looked at our car and the quote to fix it was 3,900 Euros!! More than the car is worth! They said the diesel particulate filter needed replacing which is incredibly expensive. Not knowing what else we could do, we went ahead with the flight and considered our options once more.
- We pay the money, get the car fixed and then fly back and drive it 1,000 miles home
- We just leave the car and have it scrapped in France as the repairs are more than the car is worth
- We try and get the car home some way and get it looked at / fixed in the UK instead.
Home at last
In the end we made it home safe and on time, and called garages near our home in the UK. We were quoted £950 to get the repairs done and we paid £250 to have the car repatriated – which was cheaper than driving it home in terms of fuel and toll roads anyway. When we did get the car back, we took it to our local garage who managed to unblock the diesel particulate filter and it only cost us £95! We were so relieved, but also so happy that we had bought the European breakdown assistance. For £35 we accessed a weekend in a beautiful hotel, flights and baggage home and taxis totalling more than £1,000! Moral of the story – get European breakdown cover!
