Reader, Les Sablettes

London City Airport - Paris Orly - Toulon-Hyères.

A fairly long travel day and not without its hassles.  Our scheduled driver was late in picking us up in London to take us to City Airport, there'd been a miscommunication at hq and he'd been dispatched at the wrong time.  The driver was very apologetic and did everything in his power, short of driving on the sidewalk, to get us there on time.  Thankfully we'd allowed plenty of time for London traffic, but still.  The tail back at the drop off at the airport was bad and people were getting out of cars/taxis and walking to the terminal entrance.  The airport was crazy busy.

Tiny plane to Paris, Orly.  Immigration, through security again to catch our connecting flight to Toulon-Hyères.  Tiny terminals and very busy again.  More taxi antics once at Toulon-Hyères airport, there was a rank but it was empty, we waited a bit and still no one turned up.  Found a number posted to a wall and gave them a call.  One turned up but went down the line asking where we were all going and cherry picked the one that suited him best.  Finally the cab that I'd called turned up and reassured the other travelers waiting more cabs were on the way.  Horrible traffic traveling toward Toulon and then just as we thought we were through the worst Police were stopping various cars at an intersection/rond-point/roundabout, and go figure he stops our cab.  So with the meter still running he gets out, there's lots of discussion about his license plate, a ticket written and finally we're allowed to continue our journey.  

Eventually we get to our hotel, a little frazzled.  Hungry, we went in search of an early dinner which was not to be, no restaurants started serving food until 7 p.m., we had a drink - lemonade for me, a glass of rosé for my companion, which kept us going until dinner time.  A long day, but we made it.