With more than a decade of driving experience, I was fairly confident and thought it should be easy and enjoyable when my son suggested we drive during our two-week vacation in France and Spain. It was easy, apart from the less than 300 kilometers from the Pyrenees Mountains to the Spanish seaside city Barcelona.

The roads are pretty good, compared with my driving experiences in China including the zigzagging, cliff-side roads in the Yanshan Mountains north of Beijing that lead to the grasslands in Fengning in Hebei province.

What really made me nervous was that, from the rear mirrors, I could see cars were following me so closely, and this gave me huge pressure.