On June 17, 2014, after a few days in Paris I headed towards Rennes. This is the GPSLogger track I followed:

Hitchwiki suggested that hhiking out of Paris toward the direction I wanted might take long.

I went to the specified location and it was filled with parked cars. After half an hour of no success, I decided to get closer to the road.

I the end I walked 4Km stopping at many points for varied periods of time. 3 hours had already gone by. I walked back to the first point and waited another half hour. Finally a cart stopped. A nice Colombian woman offered me a ride to the “Total” station on her way. Not too far, but at least it was on the correct path, and on the road.

By the time we got there, it was already so late that I warned my CouchSurfing host that I might not make it during the day.

After some 20 minutes in the station, two girls came up to me and offered me a ride. But they were going to Nantes, not Rennes. I said I didn’t have a place to stay in Nantes. Marie, one of the girls said she was a CSer as well and that she could probably host me.

I got in the car. After a few phone calls it was settled: she could host me. We got there at around midnight.

What have I learned from this? Paris can be a really hard place to hitch out from. And that there are people nice enough to host a stranded hitch-hiker in the last minute.