Driving

I have driven a total of three road-trips now in France and have some observations about the experiences in general.
1. Coming to Europe? Better learn how to drive a manual. While automatics exist, they are more expensive and harder to find.
2. The street lights here are in awful places. They don't have them overhead, which is nice for the scenery, but they are on the light post, right at eye level in the car. Not a problem if you are in the front, but if you are further back you just have to wait for people in front of you to move to know it is time to go.
3. Speaking of going, for as much c'est la vie lifestyle as they live in other aspects of their lives, when it comes to driving the French have no patience. When the light turns, you better move it or you're getting honked at.
4. Interestingly though, if you kill your car they are extremely patient and even somewhat sympathetic and wait until you get it started again. Strange juxtaposition.
(I'm not sure that is the right word, but it is all I can think of for the differences in not being patient sometimes, but being extremely patient others)
5. No one pays attention to speed limits here. Almost just like the States, the difference is that I haven't seen a cop on a highway here yet and that's pretty much all I have driven.
6. Make sure you have euros to pay tolls with. They don't take foreign credit cards. oops.

My plan in the future? Get rich and hire a driver. I'm workin on it ;-)