Europe Day 13

I'm exhausted, because I've been in the car all day navigating. We left Venice at the usual late departure time (around 10 am or so, almost 45 minutes later than expected) and we expected to arrive at the hotel in  hours. I did not know where the hotel was located, someone else punches in the address. This time, the address punched in was incorrect, and we ended up driving to the wrong city of Thoiry in France. Apparently there are two Thoirys, and while the hotel specifies postal code, the GPS does not use postal code to verify direction. It ended up taking us a lot of extra time to get to the hotel, and my Dad and I were exhausted upon arrival from driving and navigating respectively. I wish my Dad would just let me do some of the driving, but that's what happens when I'm not paying for the vacation, I don't get the final say on things and, so far, 75% of the suggestions I've made throughout the vacation have been opposed.

Despite our exhaustion and our 6 pm deadline for returning the car rental in Paris tomorrow (Paris, the shithole of driving, one of the worst places in our vacation in which to operate a motorized vehicle), the 3 women in our party are still intent on going to Geneva tomorrow and seeing the place. This can only go poorly.

Today I told my Dad to go to the roundabout at a rest stop so that he could backtrack and park at the eatery, but instead he turned and went 200 metres the wrong way in a one-way lane and in the wrong direction on another roundabout back to the eatery. I told him not to do that again, and explained to him why  he should have just listened to me, and he didn't say anything after I finished talking, just put the car in gear and set off back down the road. We all started talking 10 minutes later or so, but there was no apology for not listening, for driving the wrong way in traffic, nothing. My Dad has a long history of not apologizing, and I love my parents and fully acknowledge that others' parents are far worse, but I have to try my best not to repeat their mistakes, because when they make these mistakes, it is difficult for me to just let go of them. I snapped at my mom again today because I had a 2-second window to tell my Dad not to turn somewhere and she yelled out "No, turn there" from the back seat. I wish she would just understand that she has very little experience in GPS navigation and should therefore just be sitting there quietly. My mom is the reason I remember the way I do, but her situational processing and ability to adapt is poor. She doesn't think on her feet nearly as much as I thought she did as a child, and it's quite difficult to watch my parents down shift in these areas. All I can do is ensure that my down shifting is not as dramatic for my children to experience. Either that or get all the vacations out of the way before I can't navigate by car through a foreign country on my own.