Vive la France
Got back from a wonderful 2 week trip to France. I sadly found myself liking many of the French ways and disliking many of the American customs.
They are much more polite than Americans. We could speak more softly because everyone was doing so. I found this endearing. There was nary a raised voice in all the time we were there. As our final plane landed returning us home, I was shocked to hear the loud buzz of people talking on their cells phones arraning rides from several rows away. Just shut up will you!
French table wines aren't always that good. Everyone says they are so good and so cheap, but that was only true about 40% of the time. And the table wines are a simple light style.
A cheap one-time use cell phone especially with text messaging is the deal. Rather than figure out how to use our cell phones in France, we used a cheap Nokia from Virgin bought there. As minutes were expensive, we used SMS (text messaging) and it was both so fun and so effective. I can't believe (ok I can) that in the US, texting is more expensive than talking. That's retarded.
Yogurt is huge there. In fact in the relatively small grocery stores there, an entire refrigerated aisle was devoted to yogurt-like products.
A french grocery store is the antithesis of an asian market (my wife pointed this out). There's lots of dairy and cheese and wine. Additionally there was a lot of refrigerated sections.
I took a zillion pictures when I was there. I had a spiffy new DSLR and it rocks compared to the compact digital cameras most people (including me) have. I found that if someone noticed I had taken a picture of them, they glared at me 2/3 of the time and smile the rest.
One woman even raced after me, after I had taken a shot of her baby in sunglasses from my hip. I "missed" but I still erased the picture.
Lyon was really nice. My comment was that "Lyon is more Paris like than Paris itself." due to the general cleanliness and approachability of it all. There are a couple of pedestrian streets that are literally restuaraunts only. You could eat lunch and dinner for a month on Mercatier and never repeat. What a sight.
Paris was also great, because you were never more than 2 blocks from some historic important landmark or museum.
Our trip was a complete success as we visited zero museums. We were tempted to visit the Musee D'Orsay but managed to skip it.
I'm not sure if it is a French or Paris law, but I went into numerous brassieres and cafes whenever I had to go to the restroom and had no issues what so ever. This seemed fair and just, as these places live and die via tourism. Still it was nice not having to look far when walking around.
I miss the environmentally green approach of the French (and most of Europe). There were no paper towels in any restroom, as instead there were the hot air hand dryers. They were a bit more annoying but I liked not seeing a mess by the trash can.
The catalyst for the trip was our friend Stephen, who was visiting Paris for 5 weeks to take French classes being immersed in the language. He had found a ultra cheap apartment (500 Eu/month, which is about 1/4 the going rate) in the 4th arrondisment of Paris. We were visiting after he had been there for two weeks. Early on we got email from Steve, asking rhetorically "if we could survive ANYTHING". There was talk of Steve staying the dead guys apartment. A few days later more email about the Steve cleaning up the place so it was "less of a HOLE."
We visited:
- Paris, for 2 days.
- Vaison La Romaine
- Lyon
- Paris again but for 5 days.
Some observations on France and the French.
They are much more polite than Americans. We could speak more softly because everyone was doing so. I found this endearing. There was nary a raised voice in all the time we were there. As our final plane landed returning us home, I was shocked to hear the loud buzz of people talking on their cells phones arraning rides from several rows away. Just shut up will you!
French table wines aren't always that good. Everyone says they are so good and so cheap, but that was only true about 40% of the time. And the table wines are a simple light style.
A cheap one-time use cell phone especially with text messaging is the deal. Rather than figure out how to use our cell phones in France, we used a cheap Nokia from Virgin bought there. As minutes were expensive, we used SMS (text messaging) and it was both so fun and so effective. I can't believe (ok I can) that in the US, texting is more expensive than talking. That's retarded.
Yogurt is huge there. In fact in the relatively small grocery stores there, an entire refrigerated aisle was devoted to yogurt-like products.
A french grocery store is the antithesis of an asian market (my wife pointed this out). There's lots of dairy and cheese and wine. Additionally there was a lot of refrigerated sections.
I took a zillion pictures when I was there. I had a spiffy new DSLR and it rocks compared to the compact digital cameras most people (including me) have. I found that if someone noticed I had taken a picture of them, they glared at me 2/3 of the time and smile the rest.
One woman even raced after me, after I had taken a shot of her baby in sunglasses from my hip. I "missed" but I still erased the picture.
Lyon was really nice. My comment was that "Lyon is more Paris like than Paris itself." due to the general cleanliness and approachability of it all. There are a couple of pedestrian streets that are literally restuaraunts only. You could eat lunch and dinner for a month on Mercatier and never repeat. What a sight.
Paris was also great, because you were never more than 2 blocks from some historic important landmark or museum.
Our trip was a complete success as we visited zero museums. We were tempted to visit the Musee D'Orsay but managed to skip it.
I'm not sure if it is a French or Paris law, but I went into numerous brassieres and cafes whenever I had to go to the restroom and had no issues what so ever. This seemed fair and just, as these places live and die via tourism. Still it was nice not having to look far when walking around.
I miss the environmentally green approach of the French (and most of Europe). There were no paper towels in any restroom, as instead there were the hot air hand dryers. They were a bit more annoying but I liked not seeing a mess by the trash can.
Details of our trip
The catalyst for the trip was our friend Stephen, who was visiting Paris for 5 weeks to take French classes being immersed in the language. He had found a ultra cheap apartment (500 Eu/month, which is about 1/4 the going rate) in the 4th arrondisment of Paris. We were visiting after he had been there for two weeks. Early on we got email from Steve, asking rhetorically "if we could survive ANYTHING". There was talk of Steve staying the dead guys apartment. A few days later more email about the Steve cleaning up the place so it was "less of a HOLE."
posted by R at 4:46 PM
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