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Kicky clothes shop in
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Katrina blues poster |
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Letter 16
Musings on La Belle France – An RV’ers’ Dream
This letter began life as our thoughts on France (and a
little on Europe) but it continued to get longer until we decided to break
it up. So letter 16 is only
half of our thoughts on France. There
will be a Letter 17.
We have often thought that France is one of the most interesting countries
on the continent. To
begin with, it is the largest country on the European continent (except
Russia). It has an area of
more than 198,000 square miles. It
has more than 1,800 miles of sea-coast, ranging from the cold North Sea,
to the Atlantic Ocean to the warm Mediterranean.
There are mountains of all sizes from the high Alps to low hills.
Even more important is that although France has been a united
country for many years, the various areas that were combined into one
nation have maintained their separate identities more than similar places
in other countries. It seems
to us that France is more diverse than England, which was unified earlier,
or Germany, which was unified later.
The southwest, including parts of Provence, Langedoc and the
Camargue, (a marshy area along the southern coast) displays some Spanish
influence in food, architecture and dress. The Riviera seems very Italian,
in geography as well as culture, as do other parts of
Provence. Alsace has a
very German appearance. Buildings, lifestyles and food are very different
in these areas. Marseilles is
quite distinct from Toulouse and the latter differs from Dijon, and none
of these is much like other cities. You can drive along the roads and
within thirty miles see two distinctly different types of architecture –
and you know that the food will also be distinctively different.
That makes traveling in this country very interesting, and few
people are ever able to see as much as a “camping car” traveler can.
This is very different from the experience we had travelling in England,
Germany or even the United States. The
US has an assortment of physical characteristics similar to France, but we
are a decidedly more unified nation in terms of our culture. This is so
even though we are a much larger nation.
Indeed all of France could fit into the state of Texas.
It is nearly 900 miles from east to west across the widest part of
Texas alone. To give our
readers an idea of the difference in size, we looked at one of the largest
spans between two cities in France. The entire distance from Marseilles in the south on the
Mediterranean to Lille, a city in the north of France next to Belgium is
only about 600 miles. As we
traveled across Texas, the landscape changed from wooded rolling hills in
the east to dryer hills in the middle, and desert-like conditions as we
neared El Paso. The culture
did change a little, but not anywhere near as much or as abruptly within
the much shorter distances one observes here in France.
Some of these differences lie in the length of known civilized
life—much, much longer in France than in the United States.
France has prehistoric cave paintings from 35,000 years ago and
ruins from the Iron Age through the Roman Empire.
We have been in a church that was built beginning in 948 A.D.
This church was quite different from the cathedral above it, which
was begun in the 13th century!
Furthermore, through all this time, there was a huge accumulation
of the artifacts of civilization. Visible
signs of civilization from the Renaissance and Middle Ages are everywhere.
Frescos, oil paintings, tapestries, and architecture of different
periods are in every city or town. The
government puts up signs to alert you to the treasures of each town, and
there are far too many museums for any one person to see all of them. There are also visible signs of man’s inhumanity to man all
over France. From scenes of
ancient wars to terrible reminders of two World Wars in the 20th
century, it is all here.
There are lots of other things to say about France.
Anyone who drives any distance here will tell you that the roads
are excellent. There are
major six lane highways (“autoroutes”) but we rarely use them in
France, because they are all “Peage” (toll roads). All “Peage” roads are expensive, but for a motorhome,
they are particularly so. For
example, when we had to use a toll road when driving through the Riviera,
the toll for a car was 2 euros 50. Our
fee was 3 euros 75! And that
was just to cross a small area. We
therefore use the “N” (National) roads.
The “N” roads in France are very nice.
Most of the time they are one lane in each direction but there are
sections in which there are three lanes, two in one direction and one in
the other, to allow faster vehicles to pass slower ones, like us.
This works well to take the pressure off both the fast and the slow
traffic. Also, as we
mentioned in our book, these roads go through all kinds of villages where
you need to slow down, and they have many roundabouts that permit traffic
to flow to different highways. Slow,
but always interesting. These
are the roads that let you see how different the various areas of France
are. We love them.
An interesting aside. We
noticed in the news that the French government is considering selling the
entire system of Peage Autoroutes to a private company!
This seems like such an outlandish idea to us, that we can’t even
comment on it.
The highway direction signs in France are excellent – as long as
(1) you understand the system and (2) you know the geography.
When we “take the scenic route” it is because we are not
familiar enough with the geography to locate on our map the cities listed
on the signs – and therefore, we take the wrong turn.
Let us explain.
Signs do not indicate direction like east or west, or even good
information about route numbers – only cities. We knew, therefore, when we left Paris, that we needed to
“follow” Lille, because Lille is the French city closest to the part
of the Belgium border where we were going.
Unfortunately, the roads we were on did not indicate Lille.
Instead, they listed towns that were unfamiliar to us, and
difficult to find quickly in our book of maps.
If you don’t know where X is, you do hesitate about following
that direction. We drove
around and around on different roads until we saw on the map that the road
we really wanted was close to a town indicated on the signs.
Although we did not know anything about that town, we took the exit
off the highway and drove around until we found the right road.
This can create a great deal of stress in traveling!
This problem is compounded by the fact that there is always a car behind
you, limiting your ability to slow down enough to figure out a solution or
to turn off. When we say
always, we are not exaggerating. Even
when coming out of an obscure campground road, before we reach the main
road there is another car.
It is worth noting that one of the reasons these roads are so slow is that
there is a village in France every six or seven kilometers (that is three
miles or so). Our experience
is that there are far fewer such villages in
other countries. Many French villages are tiny.
You drive past perhaps twenty or thirty houses, mostly on the main
road, although there are usually houses a block away on either side.
Of course, there are bigger villages, towns and even cities on
these routes. In all cases,
you must slow down. Since we
don’t drive that fast to begin with, this means that we average about 35
miles an hour.
These French towns seem to consist of a main street with houses close to
the road, and perhaps one or more small shops.
Usually there are a boulanger (bakery), and/or patisserie (pastry
shop), a boucherie (butcher shop) or charcuterie (deli), one or two
restaurants and/or cafes, and often one traffic light.
Sometimes the two-lane street is constricted by bump-outs
encroaching on either side to force all traffic to slow down and go
through a single lane. The
houses facing the road are typically a greyish or dirty beige stucco, very
unlike the colorful houses on the Mediterranean, or the white houses with
red tiled roofs in Germany. And
the windows fronting the road often are shuttered.
One sees very few people on the street.
As we drove, it got to be a kind of game to count the number of
people visible on the streets in the towns we went through.
You didn’t have to be much of a mathematician to count.
If we saw five people on the street in a village, it was a lot.
Most villages look as if they were deserted.
No one is gardening in the yard, walking along the street or
visible in any way except in the constant flow of traffic!
We have checked our perceptions with other campers, and they agree.
Except for the time when children are walked to or from school, no
one is out and about. This is very different from Italy where every town
had people wherever one looked. But in France, we are told, the parts of the houses
that are on the road are considered the back – and those people who are
out, are in yards and other areas not visible from the main street. Of course, none of this applies to big towns or cities where
there are lots of people visible from the road.
There are a lot of campgrounds in France.
We have a French campground guide that lists 10,700 sites!
Obviously this is a great boon to an RV’er.
There are municipal campgrounds in small towns as well as
commercial sites everywhere. If
you find that you really want to stop for the night in a place that you
had not planned on, the chances of finding a place to camp are always
good. In addition, there also
are many places, called “aires”(rest-stops), where you can spend the
night. Some of these have
water and electricity available. We
have never used one so we cannot comment on them beyond this.
In spite of the availability of so many real campgrounds, we saw lots of
places where there were a group of motorhomes and caravans parked in empty
fields. In fact, we drove
into several semi-organized kinds of lots where there was parking for
motorhomes and people were obviously dry-camping.
Since we understand that this is not such a good idea in many
areas, we prefer to be in a campground.
We didn’t join these groups because we always found a campground
nearby, but it was interesting to see how many people do this.
After September 30, the number of dry campers probably goes up
because so many campgrounds close on September 30.
In France, as in other continental countries, we saw very little wild
life. We saw no squirrels at
all and very few birds. A
British couple that we met was convinced that the reason that there is so
little wildlife is that the French shoot everything that they can eat.
This probably is a gross exaggeration and we do vouch for its
truth. But we did miss seeing
the little critters that seem to be all over the place in the US.
Furthermore, we did not even see much road-kill, a sure sign that
wild animals are not plentiful here.
We do see lots of animals and birds in the Benelux countries, but
still very little road kill.
During the course of our stay, we have met more than one British citizen
who is planning to move to France. Last time we were here, one British man explained it this
way: “ Britain has subjects. France
has citizens.” He felt that
French citizens have more rights than British citizens and that the French
government is more concerned about the individual than is the British
government. This time when we asked why, they explained that everything in
the French lifestyle is “doucement” – that is, easy going. The
French seem not driven to make money.
The pursuit of money is not to be worshipped and a job should not
sap one’s enjoyment of living. And that is the way things are here, by
and large. Many stores are
closed from noon to 2 or 3 pm, even in big cities.
That includes supermarkets, gas stations, department stores, etc.
Sundays are very quiet because so many stores are closed.
On Monday, many cities are only partially open.
Supermarkets do open, but many retail shops are closed until
Tuesday. We’ve walked away
from a number of internet shops that were only open from Tuesday to
Saturday. These are small
operations, and you would think that they would find that being open on
Monday would bring in more money. But
that is exactly the point. Europeans
think that the French believe that living the good life “doucement” is
more important than money.
Another interesting sidelight. Although the use of the euro has been mandatory since 2002,
the French still put the price in French francs on nearly every sign, and
on every receipt. This custom
has cost us a couple of bad moments, when we noticed the total in francs
and didn’t realize it wasn’t euros!
We’ve often written about the supermarkets and open air markets we
visit. But we also walk
through the streets of the cities and towns we visit. Adelle is interested in seeing what fashions are like in the
different places we’ve been. She
says that in general there is not much in the shops or even being worn on
the streets that really shows a special French fashion sense.
Everything seems to revolve around clothes for teen-agers – tight
knit shirts and many flounces on the skirts.
Jeans are everywhere. These
are the same clothes that you would find in any American mall.
Even in Paris there weren’t many women on the street who would
attract attention with their clothes, though we did encounter a few.
The result of all this is that there are a lot of women walking
around in flouncy skirts with high boots.
Whatever happened to French Fashion with a capital F?
(Picture 1 shows the window of a kicky clothes shop in Paris.)
There were two big differences that stood out.
First, there are more lingerie shops in French cities than anywhere
else in the world. If we
walked along one street, there would be three shops that sold only
lingerie. Second, there were many more people wearing scarves in France
than anywhere else.
We know that some Americans became anti-French as a result of the French
government refusing to support the Bush Administration in the war in Iran.
We think that we should mention that there does not seem to be any
prejudice against Americans in France, despite the fact that most of the
French still do not support the war.
Evidence that the French people think of Americans in friendly
terms is the sign we saw in the city of Perigeux in the central region of
France, advertising a benefit concert to help New Orleans musicians who
were adversely affected by Katrina. (Picture
2 is the sign displayed in Perigeux.)
Next letter will deal with the most important part of a visit to France
– FOOD.
Adelle & Ron
Adelle and Ron Milavsky, Authors
Take Your RV to Europe, The Low-Cost Route to Long-Term Touring
© Adelle and Ron Milavsky, 2005
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