I love driving

I love driving. I do not know what Nathan would do when I am too old to drive... It won't be pretty.

Getting French driver's licence was amazingly easy. Firstly, we were lucky that we had an Ontario driver's license. I do not know why, but not all Canadian provinces are granted simple exchange of license in France. Secondly, we had our Driver's Record which states the day we obtained our license. One must be driving at least two years for the exchange to be granted. As the Ontario driver's license only shows the date of renewal, we needed this second piece of document. Thirdly, thanks to Canada's official bilingualism, we had no need to have our license translated. We went to the Prefecture, and surrendered our beloved, credit-card size, plastic license. In a week, we received our French license, good for the rest of our life, in paper!! It is carefully laminated so that it is still good when you are 80 years old! Now I regret that I did not use a better picture...

Although we still do not own a car, we now have access to one....or many :). We are now members of Alpes Autopartage, a car sharing system. For €16 per month, we have access to almost 50 vehicles in Grenoble, and we are entitled to use the system in other French cities as well. Making a reservation is easily done on-line according to your needs. You pay the hourly rate and the mileage, but gas is already included in the price. From our apartment, we have three cars within 5 minutes on foot, and so far the experience has been great.

What is great about this car sharing system is that you only drive when you really need it. So far, we only booked the car three times, and other than that we had no need for cars. It encourages people to take the public transportation, and in Grenoble, it is truly ideal with the tram system. In addition, we now bike most of the time. Nathan bikes to work using his Métro-Vélo, a bike rented for a year, and I take my red folding bike which we shipped from Canada. I happily ride my small bike as I do not stand out as much as I did in Waterloo! And when it rains, there is always the tram and bus.

At the same time we try to be as much environmentally conscious as possible, I am happy to have the sense of mobility and freedom that having an access to cars provides us. Car sharing system: brilliant.