Our 2023 European Camper

For our month in Alsace and the Alps, we rented (some months ago) a Citroen Jumper/Pilote camper van from Avis, the Adventure camper van pictured here. It's a little longer than expected (6m) and has manual and not automatic transmission, which is OK. It's ample for our modest needs and purposes and is similar to what we'd want to have in the States next time around. There are very general instructions for driving and for camping and for some of the assorted systems and appliances, though not always for the models we have. Even for people as experienced in RVs as we are, there are always new things to discover, learn, get accustomed to, etc. Internet, Google Lens and Google Translate to the rescue! Also helpful European neighbors in the campgrounds. The distances between things we want to see are relatively short, so the driving has not been too demanding. We mostly avoid the freeways, anyway. 

After picking up the camper in Reuil-Malmaison, we drove around Paris and then east to Nancy. We thought we'd do Nancy--the "cradle of Art Nouveau"--in two days before heading on to Strasbourg and the Alsace. Nancy is so charming and interesting, however, we wound up spending four days and still leaving the place very reluctantly. It will take days to blog about our time in Nancy, and then more days to blog about our week or so in Strasbourg and the four or five beaux villages we visited in Alsace. So bear with us. As I write, today we have pressed on through the Jura, had a chicken dinner in Bourg en Bresse, and now are camped just short of Chamonix in the French Alps. And we are enjoying being back on the road.

At Baume-les-Messieurs today, in the Jura, Bourgogne-Franche-Comte
region