That's a lot of Gas Money

ONE OF THE interesting things we’ve noticed about our lifestyle in France is that we do a lot more together as a family than we did in Washington. There are a number of reasons that might explain this: 1) since we are here for a finite period of time we are trying to do as much as possible while we can; 2) we live in a part of the world where there are an incredible amout of things to do; 3) we don’t have any friends. (I’m leaving out the obvious reason: we don’t have ESPN or C-SPAN).

I keep telling myself that is has to be number one or two, but just to be sure I’ve begun to compile a list of our travels, and I mean the longish trips we’ve taken – often involving an overnight or two. While compiling the list I decided to add up the total distance we have traveled on these trips. Then, just to make my stomach hurt, I divided that by my estimated fuel efficiency and muliplied that by the cost of gas. Ouch. I’ll show you those numbers at the end of this post.

But here are the major (about 100km one way or more) trips we have taken and the estimated length of those trips measured in kilometers and round trip:

• San Remo, Italy (day trip twice @ 160 km = 320km)
• St. Tropez (day trip = 190 km)
• Giens/Toulon (day trip = 225)
• Monaco: (6 trips @90 km = 540 ) Monaco doesn’t really count because it’s so close, but we’ve been so many times (mostly to show visitors) that I’m including it.
• Modena, Bologna, Venice Italy (5 days = 1050 km)
• Milan, Como & Switzerland (4 days = 1300 km)
• Valberg/Entrevaux (day trip = 210 km)
• Chamonix (5 days = 1000 km)
• Lyon (3 days = 890 km)
• Agivnon & Western Provence (4 days = 1150 km)

Rough Total = 7000 km

Now, with respect to fuel, let me first remind you that we are driving a ‘mini-van’ of sorts in a country where fuel prices -- adjusted to US dollars -- is in the range of $8 per gallon (I'm glad my paycheck is in Euros!) Taking into account only the trips above (and not, for example, our many trips to Nice to watch hockey, or to Cannes to go to the beach, or to the mountains to go exploring) our total fuel costs for these trips was about 850 Euros, or $1300. That figure, I might add, does not include the hefty tolls that French and Italian motorways often require.

Next year I’m considering changing the name of this blog from French for a While to Broke in a While.

Ah, but it's all worth it. The simple fact is that numbers 1 and 2 from the top of this post both explain why we have decided to travel around so much. We're not going to be here forever so we're just doing as much as we can while we can. Carpe Diem.

[Note: if you would like a copy of my spreadsheet for these calculations, email me.]
CJS