My daughter, my husband and I arrived back from France on Friday. We had a wonderful time. We wished we could have stayed longer. We only had a day and a half in Paris and we accidentally took a 4 hour nap after we arrived grrrr, it was a mistake but we made the best of it. Paris was totally fogged in when we arrived :( so we couldn%26#39;t see anything from the plane or the drive into Paris. The taxi from CDG was 38 euros to Arrdt 10. Our driver was nice and helpful spoke little english but we muddled through and actually it was fun trying to communicate. Here are my observations, others may have different opinions but this is how it worked for us.
1. Blue Jeans everywhere, no kidding young and old alike. We did see some very well dressed people and some people that weren%26#39;t.
2. Tennis Shoes all different kinds, colored, bowling shoe types, all white, white with colors you name it. This was mainly at the tourist places (Eiffel tower, Louvre, Notre Dame etc) Restaurants were a littlemore dressy at night.
3. Pickpockets - We were not but I actually saw one in Notre Dame on Palm Sunday! He saw me watching him trying to get into a man%26#39;s backpack and a very nicely dressed elderly French lady caused a scene (on purpose I think) and an employee chased her out and the Man disappeared.
4. Metro- We used it, it was relatively easy. We had a power outage that lasted about 1 minute freaked my 10 yr old out but all in all was ok.
5. People- only ran into 2crabby people all week: the lady at the Eiffel tower gift shop, and a grocery store clerk in Toulouse.
FYI in large super markets in France they charge for grocery bags. LOL (a long funny you had to be there story)but by in large everyone was Helpful and Nice!
6. Misc.- BatoBus was a great idea. Buy tickets on the boat.
Get in line early in morning for Eiffel tower. No lines at Louvre at 3:30 on Sunday and we entered through Pyramid. Women wore the short basic trench as a coat in basic colors not the bright we see here in the States. Men wore black leather jackets. You can check your coat at the Louvre no charge.
7. We spoke little but the basic French (it is amazing how much we did pick up and remember from my 4 yrs of high school) but we tried and I think it made a difference.
We really did have fun. When we got lost we popped into a hotel lobby and the manager helped us. We popped into a Bar also when we got lost and they were very helpful too. My daughter had an experienceof a lifetime. I truly enjoyed my very short stay in Paris and was impressed with Toulouse (very beautiful). We used our manners as suggested and it did go a long way. We asked how to pronounce words and tried to get it right and thats what counted. Nothing but nice and wonderful things to report from France.
8.WRITE DOWN ADDRESSES- Most helpful tip! This helped us More than once!
Merci Paris! Toulouse! and merci to the Air France steward that took the time with my daughter and made her feel special!
But most of all, Merci to all the people on this forum that answer the same questions over and over, give hints and tips to make trips easier and take time away from theirday to help others like me and my family.
Thank you,
*GraceinParis*
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Merci Beaucoup: Cher %26quot;Gracieinparis%26quot; That was a tres plaisant report.
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Great report... just a clarification. Bags are free in the vast majority of supermarkets. Some offer nicer bags for a charge. I think LeClerc does not provide bags and charges for them but they are the only chain that does that.
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Personally I think ALL food stores should charge for bags anyway - it would make people think twice about recycling/re-using bags rather than ignoring the environmental implications of throwing away so many millions of plastic bags. Just a thought! But glad you had such a good time, GraceinParis, and thanks for your feedback - very useful for me, since I%26#39;m off to Paris next week.
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Morgan,
I do believe it was the supermarket LeClerc we used. It had a big L above the store. What made it unique was that here we were 3 Americans standing at the cash register waiting for the cashier to give us a bag and she didn%26#39;t even acknowledge us, in other words ignore us. She did however understand us when we asked for a receipt. She didn%26#39;t look too pleased we were there. So we just picked up our purchases and walked the 10 minute trip to our hotel in Blagnac. Later I asked the hotel staff what was with the bag situation. She told us we had to pay for the bag and that the clerk should of tried to explain that to us and she apologized for her. I told her we would have been glad to pay if she had only tried to explain, I think we would have gotten the idea. I also told her no need to apologize because after all she wasn%26#39;t the clerk. We laughed it off as one of those quirky things that happen to you on a trip. We even joked about it and imagined what a story that clerk had to tell when she got home. LOL%26quot; No bag for you!%26quot; was our inside joke for the rest of the trip. No hard feelings we just laughed at ourselves and had fun with it. It was worth it just so I could have a six pack of Coke Light without paying hotel prices for them.
*GraceinParis*
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Yes the big L is LeClerc. Arent those hotel cola prices insane!
Clerks in grocery stores can be really fairly rude here. She may ignore everyone, not just americans :). They perch in their chair and often chat with the other clerks as if you werent there. It does make a good story.... No bag for you! Love it :)
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Tape a l%26#39;oiel, I thought they only did that in De%26#39;twa Mi. You can actually
walk in a store, shop, payment center and stand there while everryone continuestheir conversation as if you were not present.
Thanks for letting moi know as I can prepare myself not to become
frustrated. Back in the day when I was a salesclerk or cashier we
were drilled daily as to the importance of the customer to employment.
No customer/client no job, position. These forums are great for getting
the feel of a place. I%26#39;ll be snubbed in Paris any day.
medici
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How did you travel to Toulouse--car, plane, train? Do post a little report on the Toulouse Board. Not many people go to that Board, but I do and would love to hear more about that part of your trip.
Funny about the %26quot;no bag for you%26quot;...those are some of the best laughs. We didn%26#39;t have to pay for bags at Champion market, but ran into the clerks who ignore you. And yes, they did that to everyone. And yes, I think my checkers at my local store here in California, read the same training book. Chat with the other checkers and ignore the person you are waiting on! :)
One tip on groceries--on our first grocery trip we tried to buy fresh fruit and the clerk got very irritated as he couldn%26#39;t ring it up and kept asking us the price. The first apple he then just threw down the checkstand without charging us. Then when he came to more, he called over the manager. We were so confused as to why he couldn%26#39;t ring in the fruit. The manager took all our fruit and came back in a minute with printed out barcodes stuck to each piece of fruit. We hadn%26#39;t seen that the customer is supposed to weigh the fruit on a special scale that prints out a price tag/barcode. Once we knew that, it was fun to find the fruit in French on the scale, press the button and tag our own fruit. I am sure they thought we were complete idiots! But they were nice about it--probably went home cursing or laughing their heads off at our ignorance.
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Cybertrav,
I would be most happy to post on the Toulouse forum. When researching this trip, I found very little on the town. But fortunately all went well. Would you like a an overview of our trip or something more detailed? (I can get a little wordy)
*GraceinParis*
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I would love an email with info from your trip to Toulouse. My husband and I will be there for 3 days the end of May; and then we%26#39;ll head up to Paris for 5 days after that. My email is: bpederse@optonline.net. Thanks so much.
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I love wordy--OBVIOUSLY, as my posts are always long...bring it on! I want to hear about it! We just flew out of Toulouse and spent an afternoon there. Most of our trip was southwest of there. We were wine shopping in Toulouse and went to a neat outdoor market and got really old magazines and some books in French for the kids.
Post in on the Toulouse Board.
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