Trish Gordon

No, I am not making a distress call. My husband and I are trying to plan a trip to Provence and are finding out that the only time we might be able to go is over the May Day holiday (May 1st) I know that France also has a holiday for V day which is approximately one week later. Any information on how the holidays might affect our holiday would be appreciated.

StCirq

May 1 and 8 are holidays. In my experience, a lot of things are closed on those days, though I've never been in a big city on either day that I can remember. I just flipped through my Eyewtiness Guide to Provence quickly and noted that a lot of sites mention being closed May 1, but few mention May 8.

Marilyn

We were in France last May. Our only problem was the car rental agencies. I hadn't realized about the holidays until after our plane tickets were set so everything had to work around that.

Well, when you get lemons you make lemonade so ... We took a train from Paris to Renne on the May 1st (trains were running), saw the sites, stayed overnight and picked up the car the next day. So far so good. I had specifically asked about closure on the 8th before leaving the U.S. and was assured that the agencies would be open on V-Day. We arrived in Rouen on the 8th, drove to the car rental place to return the car and, you guessed it. Luckily we were planning to stay at least one night in Rouen before returning to Paris by train. We found a lot to park the car in overnight and had to return it the next day (May 9). Don't know what we would have done if we had planned to board the train on the 8th.

Just do your homework and work around the obsticles. After all, you're in France. What could be bad?

Ann

I don't know how long you will be in France, but I fairly sure there is holiday for Ascension (24th?) as well. and Pentecost too. I seem to remember almost weekly holidays during early summer.

clairobscur

Yes...May 24 will be a holiday, too. Pentecote is on sunday, anyway.

Rex

8 May is Liberation day (maybe V-day is another name for it; did we call it "V-E" day here in America?) - - I have never been in Paris on 1 May, but the parades down the Champs Elysees for 8 May are very cool.