France - it’s just so hard to explain

In fact, it’s not just hard to explain. It’s a downright conundrum. How can one explain a country that has the highest cheese and wine consumption in the world and a lot of smoking to boot and yet one of the lowest rates of heart disease? How does a country that works a 35 hour week and goes on strike every second day maintain its status as one of the world’s largest economies? It just doesn’t make sense. And yet, it works for 63 million French people. One against 63 million isn’t great odds so I doubt I’ll convince them to change their ways but it hasn’t stopped me railing against them.

France is a very pretty country. No disputing that. I do dispute the images published in scenic calendars of Provence - looks nothing like those images (someone needs to sue someone for false advertising), but it is pretty nonetheless. But why does everything within it have to be so darn hard? My favourite car reviewer, Jeremy Clarkson, often rails against and about the French. Their cars don’t work, their GPS systems go on strike whenever you want to turn them on, their road rules are too European - he goes on. And it’s all very funny when he writes about it. I assumed, since he is British, that he was exaggerating. It’s no secret there’s no love lost between the Frogs and Brits. But after 2 weeks in France, I’m starting to side with JC. More than that, I think I may have uncovered the mother of all conspiracy theories. More on that in a moment.

Firstly, let me tell you about our trip beyond the chateaux and balloons. We set off with some trepidation for Auvergne - cheese country. The trepidation didn’t relate to cheese, but our lack of GPS (though if Clarkson is to be believed, it wouldn’t have mattered whether we had one or not - if it was French, it wouldn’t have worked regardless). We also didn’t have a map and Simone had declared early about her map reading skills. Since I was driving, navigation would be reliant on what I could remember from google maps, reviewed that morning. In the end, none of our challenges related so much to us as much as they did to the way the French do stuff. Where to start?

Well, firstly, Simone wasn’t completely incapable of reading a map at all. I’d never been so pleased to discover her to be wrong. Once she knew where she was and which direction we were heading, she proved to be an excellent navigator. No thanks to France’s signage. Or lack thereof. Very, very large lack thereof. Evidently everybody knows exactly where they are going and therefore signage is irrelevant.

Sure, we made it harder for ourselves by not buying a road map. But even a road map does not help when there are insufficient signs to orient yourself against. And before someone goes all Man Versus Wild on me, let me just point out that using the sun was not a viable option - it rained almost the whole 2 weeks.

As well as the signage issues, there are a couple of other little French foibles relating to roads. For example, tolls. Loooooooots of them. And no e-tags either. Pay when you roll up - unless of course you’ve discovered that you’re in the credit card lane, which when you eventually back out of, you realise why you made the mistake. The sign telling you it’s a credit card lane is on the side of the lane, which you can only see once you’re alongside it. How could we miss it? Another example, unmanned petrol stations. While we’re talking petrol stations, let’s add, no (or at the very least, extremely sporadic) highway services. Unmanned petrol stations are probably very efficient for the business owner - no pesky people to pay wages too. Excellent. How does one pay at such a place with cash? One can’t. Ergo, if one’s card is not liked by the machine, one can’t get petrol. Anyone else see a problem here? Sporadic services.....when they appear you may not be able to use them..... any takers want to work out how the story is likely to end....? Well, don’t worry, we didn’t run out of petrol. We’re two organised, highly capable women so we were fine. But again, no thanks to the French.

Other issues include a lack of public toilets. Scratch that. Let’s tell it like it is and say that the sanitary facilities in every place we’ve been to in France are substandard when they are available but mostly they aren’t. Average grade achieved by French toilets was a C-, buoyed by the fact that we occasionally found one in a restaurant.

So, back to cheese country. Interesting segue because our adventure in cheese mis-fired thanks to a tummy bug picked up by Simone. I’ll spare you the details but it made for a slightly tense drive to Provence as we tried to make sure rest stops could be timed to fit need to the aforementioned sparse services. The countryside in this part of France is beautiful. Lots of ancient villages nestled amongst craggy hills. Simone and I agreed that cheese country warranted a return visit for further exploration and cheese consumption. Alas, lured by the promise of the abundant beauty of Provence and the Cote d’Azur, we left behind the cheese uneaten and drove on. And on. And then some more. It turns out it’s a long drive to Provence.

Arriving in Provence late in the evening, we still had our joyful expectations in tact when we checked in to our excellent hotel. What we hadn’t counted on was that the next day was All Saints Day. Guess what that meant. Oh, something fresh and new for France - everything was closed. As we wandered around Aix-en-Provence and found most things closed, it occurred to me that the town looked nothing like those scenic calendars claimed. Sure it was pretty, but hardly the stunningly charming pictures I saw in the calendar. Given everything was closed, we elected to go to the movies that night and saw Ides of March.

The next day, given that All Saints Day was over, we decided to drive through the countryside to explore the allegedly quaint villages dotting the countryside. By now, you won’t be surprised to hear that they were also full of nothing. Closed nothing. So, word up - if you’re traveling to Provence, try another season.

Day 3 we had a little more luck back in Aix and found some markets. Since the town now had life, it’s calendaric quality rose a smidge. We were however, completely sick of rain so we headed south to Nice, where there are 300 days of sunshine a year.

You know where this is going don’t you? There may be 300 days of sun but none of them coincided with our visit. In fact, just for fun, the region decided to have unseasonably heavy storms instead. Undaunted, we did what one does when the going gets tough - we retreated to a day spa for some serious pampering.

Scrubbed, oiled and refreshed, we emerged ready to take on Nice. But not before almost anything that could go wrong went wrong at the hotel. I won’t even bore you with the details but after all the nuisances France had thrown at us, I’m not sure why I was at all surprised. On balance, its perfectly reasonable (in France) that a 4 star hotel only provides room service for 5 hours a day during what they believe to be established and immutable dining hours. Evidently wanting to eat at 3.30 is simply ludicrous. What was I thinking?

As the spa had been done and the tough kept coming, the next day we decided to leave the country and hop across the border to Monaco. Now this, I’m pleased to say was a success. We had an immensely good time and only got a little cold and slightly wet.

Monaco was not as grandly glamourous as I expected. There were some beautiful Belle Epoque buildings in Monte Carlo (and lots of heart-breakingly beautiful super cars and yachts), but the old town, including the Royal Palace were quite modest. The old town had the usual European Old Town charm but the palace was the biggest surprise. The surprise wasn’t that it was closed (it was closed but this was no longer a surprise). The surprise was that at least the exterior was very plain, quite sombre and not at all royal looking. It could have been an ancient country keep or even an old jail. Unfortunately, Al and Chaz weren’t in, so we couldn’t go to tea. Probably lucky. Tea would be awfully tense after that whole forced wedding controversy thing. Must say, the souvenir photos don’t tell a happy tale. Assuming the royal photographers would have taken thousands of shots, the fact that they chose the ones they did as presumably the best ones does not bode well for the couple.

I didn’t realise until I got there just how small this country is. Two square kilometres. With 400 law enforcement officers (police and royal guard). If they all joined hands, they could almost encircle the country. But small geographically doesn’t mean small personality. Lots of very rich and beautiful people, high-rises, an interesting custom of putting streets underground to save space and of course, the very famous F1 track, which we did a loop of.

We also had a great time seeing the wonderful selection of aquatic life in the Museum of Oceanographie. Jacques Cousteau was curator there for some 30 years and when you get a glimpse of the world beneath, it's easy to see why he was so very passionate about it. Those fish and things are really quite fascinating.

Now, the best for last. On our tour, we stopped at the medieval village of Eze. Oh my, how beautiful! Its a little time capsule, albeit with some tourists dandering about. The architecture is magical. Pedestrian only, the village houses a permanent population of 42. The buildings’ ages span the 1300s to the 1700s, with the “new” church being the youngest building in town. Perched on top of (yet another) craggy hill, the town is picturesque from every angle and exploring each street just provided view after view of a place time forgot. You can almost smell the history in the air. Not in a bad sanitation kind of way (although they only got running water in the 1930s) but simply that it seems so untouched. There is no visible imprint of modernity. The very stones felt alive with untold stories. One day, I would like to return and spend a few days there to find the stories.

And so I wrap up this blog on a high note but with one thing still requiring explanation. The conspiracy theory I believe I have uncovered which relates back to that long standing English-French rivalry. Having lived in England for a couple of years, I know it’s strengths and foibles. And when you distill the long-held rivalry between the two nations it largely comes down to 2 things: food and weather. I’ll agree that the French make better wine than the English but in terms of variety and quality of food availability (including the production of artisan cheeses), I don’t think there’s much between them. The French have been better at marketing themselves (refer to earlier observation about misrepresentative calendars) but in reality, England isn’t that far behind. Which leaves weather and that is a true sore point for the English who suffer terribly from Seasonal Affective Disorder and flock by the hundreds of thousands to warmer climes to try to make up for their lack of sunshine hours. That the English weather is terrible is a fact that cannot be tampered with. That the French have better weather is, as I have revealed, a myth. Therefore, I think it’s an obvious conclusion that for the last 1000 years, the French have just done a marketing snow-job. Their weather is no better - they just pretend it is to annoy the Brits.

So, if you fancy a European holiday in late October/early November and want to enjoy picturesque countryside, eat lovely artisan produce and imbibe a delicious, locally-produced beverage, go to Gloucestershire. The weather can’t be worse than we’ve had in France, things don’t close down for days at a stretch and you can be assured of being able to read the menu. Plus, for us Aussies, they drive on the correct side of the road in GB.