Five Weeks in France (Provence, Languedoc, Dordogne)
 

I've just returned from 5+ weeks in France. Our itinerary included 3 nights in Paris, 2 nights in Burgundy, a week in a rental house in Provence, 2 weeks in a rental house in Languedoc, a week in a rental in Dordogne, 2 nights in Normandy, and a final night at a hotel near CDG. If you're interested in details, you can check out my blog:

http://daytripper-franceadventure2010.blogspot.com/

After reading the forums, I would like to offer some tips based on some of the forum postings.

Airport Shuttle?: Don't bother. My Mom uses a 4-wheel walker and we had quite a lot of luggage, so I was worried about using a taxi and booked a shuttle through Shuttle-Inter for both airport pick-up and hotel pick-up 3 days later. Neither shuttle showed up and we were able to get a roomy taxi curbside at the airport with no problem. Further, I overheard someone say that it took them 3 hours to get to CDG from downtown Paris by taxi - it is better to stay your last night at an airport hotel unless you can take the RER train to the airport. It also took us nearly 2 hours to get into Paris from the airport due to traffic.

Taxis in Paris: When we needed a taxi to take us to Orly to pick up our rental car, I asked the hotel to call one, but they were unable to get one to respond. I was also unsuccessful in flagging one down in the street. I finally walked over to the taxi stand 2 blocks from our hotel and brought one back. If you need to catch a train or plane at a specific time, allow plenty of time and be prepared to track down a taxi on your own.

Shoes: There are a lot of postings about what shoes to take. I took Sketcher Sport shoes & Merrill mesh slides. I wore the Merrill shoes 90% of the time. I found them good support on cobblestones and very comfortable.

Purse: I bought a PacSafe wiremesh-reinforced bag, which was overkill. The size of the bag was okay and I could sling it cross-body, but any purse that will hold your stuff and can be secured would be fine. I never felt vulnerable or unsafe.

Fashion: Don't be intimidated by the so-called French fashion scene. We didn't see much evidence of it even in Paris. For the most part everyone wore pretty much what we wear here, including jeans and polar fleece. Polar fleece may be out of place in cities like Paris, but is okay in the country, if it's cool enough to need it. The scarf appears to be the single fashion item used universally by the French.

Driving: Driving in France is pretty much like driving in the US. The French are aggressive drivers, they tailgate, and cut in close when they pass. The autoroute is the fastest way to get from one place to another, but the D routes are also very good roads and offer more sightseeing. When renting a car, select a diesel, which gets better mileage. Diesel (gazoil) is available everywhere and runs .15 - .30 cents less per liter than regular gas. Buy gas at the super markets where it is considerably cheaper than at other gas stations.

Credit/Debit cards: We had no problems with our US credit/debit cards, but we could not use them at non-attended gas stations or toll booths. We got cash from ATMs and used it, rather than using cards for routine purchases, including meals. This saved bank charges.

I benefitted a lot from the postings on this forum, so I hope someone will benefit from these timely tips.

Happy Travels.

What a wonderful trip. I so wish we had the time for 5 weeks in France. At present 2 weeks is our limit.

I am enjoying your blog a little at a time to make it last longer. All the little details are so interesting.

Beautiful photos. Hope I can access your blog later when I have time to read more.

A good read !

Some more photos you may recognise :
http://the-languedoc-page.com/photos

Peter

I've just started to read, and I've been tremendously impressed with your journal on many levels.

I find it so inspiring that you're traveling with your mom, who's in her 80s and using a walker.

As someone who'll be traveling to the Dordogne with three generations next summer, I'm looking forward to reading more of your journal.

Thanks very much for sharing with us.

Just started to look at the photos, and I have to point out that, although one is headed 'hummingbird', there are no hummingbirds in Europe. For years we thought that's what they are, but they are in fact sphynx moths. When you check a bird book, it even includes the moths, with a note NOT to mistake them for a hummingbird. But they really do look like them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphingidae

I enjoyed reading your blog. We plan a trip to the Dordogne, Brittany and Normandy next spring.

So now that the trip's over and you've had time to digest, what were the highlights? Which places would you return to, which places were a waste of time? What's worth a detour?

Oh, this is "incroyable" !! My daughter and I are going in early June. Not nearly as much time as you, but wow, i've learned so much already from your text and photos. Thank you for posting your blog site. What a labor of love!
And bravo to wonderful daughters who lovingly and patiently travel with their Moms!!

I thoroughly enjoyed your blog! I made a note of how you prepared that duck breast...we'll be in Languedoc for a month in November (not far off now!) and staying in a friend's flat. I know we'll cook a lot "at home."

Your blog has been most helpful!

The photo is not of a hummingbird which is an American bird. It is of a moth that hovers over the flower unlike a butterfly which lands on the flower from which it is removing the nectar.

We have those sphynx moths all the time in our garden in the Dordogne. I too thought they were hummingbirds the first time I saw them. My kids used to call them hummingbees.

ttt so i can continue reading your blog - thanks for posting the link.

In this picture one can clearly see the proboscis:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mksfca/4303612455/in/

CJTO, fabulous report. Loved your pics and description.

Carlux, thank you for pointing out that our "hummingbird" is actually a moth & for the link to Wikipedia. I'll post a correction to my blog.

In response to MiMar -- I've been home a week and been very busy getting reconnected, so haven't had a lot of time to reflect, but a few things do come to mind:

1) I really tried hard to learn more French this time and I think it truly did enrich my trip. I spent about a year with Pimsleur CDs, which I like much better than Rosetta Stone. For each of my 4 trips to France I've had progressively more French, from my 5 basic phrases to being able to hold a brief & simple conversation. This time I think it really helped me to connect with locals. Even a few words in French from me would be enough for a French-speaker to launch into a dialogue. I didn't understand a lot of it, and mostly nodded and said "oui!" Several people commented that my French was very good, but perhaps the unspoke was "for an English-speaker."

2) Renting houses. We rented 3 houses and those allowed us to live somewhat like locals. The one in Languedoc, especially, was great because we were in a village where I could walk down to get fresh bread everyday and make contact with locals. Have a house for a week or 2 and using that as a central base is, I think, a lot better than moving every 2-3 days.

Gotta run & pick up someone from airport who just came in from Israel. I'll add more later...

Adding to my post-trip reflections:

3) Maybe it is from the perspective of being back in Seattle rain, but one thing I keep thinking about with longing is having lunch in the outside seating areas of restaurants where we could enjoy the warm sunshine as well as do some class-A people watching.

4) We didn't do a whole lot on any given day. For the most part, we had one major sightseeing activity a day. It was enough to be in France and soak up the ambience. My Mom's mobility issued kept us from doing some things we might have done otherwise. For example, I probably would have visited more caves in the Dordogne, but I hated leaving my Mom in the car with her Kindle for long periods of time.

5) I'm really glad I took the laptop. Other than being able to keep up with email and paying bills, and posting on my blog, it allowed me to upload my pictures everyday, so I could add captions and meaningful file names while the images were fresh in my mind. This really paid off when we got home with over a 1,000 pictures to deal with. When we didn't have email access where we were staying, we found a McDonald's where for the cost of a "Coca Light" I could take advantage of their free & unlimited Wi-Fi.

People ask us what our favorite thing was and my answer is always the same: Whatever we were doing at any given moment was our favorite thing. There is so much to see & do in France, and each region has its own culture and attractions, that is is really hard to pick just one or two things as "favorites."

People ask us what our favorite thing was and my answer is always the same: Whatever we were doing at any given moment was our favorite thing. There is so much to see & do in France, and each region has its own culture and attractions, that is is really hard to pick just one or two things as "favorites."

SO TRUE! Thank You

I second that cigalechanta........ah France!

CJT, my wife and I have just returned from a trip quite similar to yours including Honfleur and Sarlat. Your posting and blog are quite helpful and we, as you, benefited significantly from postings on this board in our planning. On the down side, we also got some monumentally poor advice, most put up by good-intentioned but ill-informed people. I was shocked to read you suggest, without qualification (except for your suggestion about access to RER), that people spend their last night at an airport hotel.

We used Peugeot's Open Europe program and booked into what is now called Novotel Suites at CDG prior to flying home on United. We turned the car in to Peugeot and asked if they could take us back to Novotel. They claimed that their insurance would not cover them if they left the airport grounds but agreed to take us to the hotel shuttle bus stop at Terminal 2.

When we got there (close to 5 p.m. on a Thursday) we were overwhelmed by the crush of people with luggage. We hadn't any because we'd already spent one night at the airport (at the Marriott because the first night at Novotel was so bad the GM refunded our money but that's another story). As I can carry no bags at all that left it for my wife to do. Turns out that the bus going to the Marriott runs on a schedule and it took us 40 minutes to get there because the driver stopped and waited at several hotels in order to keep to that schedule.

When we had inquired earlier at the Marriott about using the shuttle bus to get to the airport on the day of our flight we were told that no shuttle from that immediate area goes to Terminal 1 where United is located. Thus, we would have had to load up our cases and, then, negotiate our way from Terminal 2 to 1. This would have been a deal (and back) breaker and exceptionally difficult to accomplish.

While your intentions are good, your readers would be far better served if you would not make such sweeping suggestions without understanding what is implied by them. You are so credible that people are likely to accept your recommendations and for people in my wife's and my circumstances there would be some significant negative ramifications. We took a taxi from the hotel and it was well worth the 20 euros we paid

Thanks for sharing but, please, don't venture into such areas without more information.

St. Witz has a couple of hotel of the chain type only 15 minutes from the airport. That's what we did. We kept the car until the last day, and because our two hour pre-flight arrival was before the office opened, we just left the car in the parking lot of Europcar and dropped the keys in a slot at their counter. We had no problems.

The view from our hotel room:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mksfca/...7623316531799/

In order for me to negotiate large airports it is essential that I have a wheelchair and an attendant. My wife is busy with our cases and her hands are more than full. We both recognized, the second we saw it, that the shuttle bus would not work for us as we needed to go Terminal 1. However, just sitting on the bus at Terminal 2 as we awaited it to finish loading we marveled at just how large Terminal 2 is in terms of distance from the bus stop and the number of gates it has. Based on that experience alone we would never have considered using the bus. The guest services manager at the Marriott told us in great detail all the challenges involved in negotiating for the limited shuttle service they offered and agreed that a taxi was the only viable option for someone with limited mobility.

Thanks for your response, CJT. I'm always interested in what stands out in people's memories after they return from a trip.

Can't wait to read your entire blog. Your pictures look fabulous. We were in Provence this past June and they brought back some great memories. We are planning a 3-week trip next June to Dordogne region. I'm sure your blog will offer up some great ideas.