Table of Contents for this Episode
Category: Alsace and Lorraine
[00:00:00]
Welcome and Introductions
Annie: This is Join Us in France, episode 621, six cent vingt et un.
Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today on the podcast: Northeast France Itinerary: Lille, Metz, Nancy and Alsace
Annie: Today, I bring you a conversation with Jennifer Hanniman, a Canadian living in the Netherlands, who travels often in the northeast of France.
We talk about using Lille as a base for World War I sites like Vimy Ridge and Ypres, and why Metz is underrated, and why you shouldn’t visit Nancy over New Year’s , and why Alsace is worth a summer visit.
Podcast support
Annie: Before we start, this show runs on listener support. If you want to work with me directly, I do itinerary [00:01:00] consults. I’ve written eight tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, and I can take you on day trips from Toulouse, where I live. Everything is at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
Magazine segment
Annie: For the Magazine part of the podcast, I’ll update you on the protests and riots that hit French cities last week, what’s planned next, and why I’m not changing my own travel plans. The trouble is real, but it’s concentrated in very few places, and most of France is carrying on as usual.
Bonjour, Jennifer Hanniman, and welcome back to Join Us in France.
Jennifer: Bonjour, Annie. It’s great to be back.
Annie: Wonderful to see you today, to talk to you today. We are going to talk about a part of France that has come up a bit on the podcast by now, but that’s the northeast of France. And you live [00:02:00] in that area, although not in France, right?
Jennifer: Yes. No, I live in the Netherlands. I live in the very south of the Netherlands, so I’m about three to five hours to most of the places in the northeast of France.
Annie: Right, but originally you’re not from the Netherlands.
Jennifer: No, I’m actually Canadian. We moved to the Netherlands about two years ago, and we’ll be here for another couple years, my husband and I.
Annie: Wonderful. Oh, then you plan on going back?
Jennifer: Yes, we’re going back. My husband’s here with a temporary contract, a teaching contract.
Annie: Wonderful.
Jennifer: We will be heading back, so we are taking full advantage and trying to travel a lot. So we’ve had an opportunity to see many places in the northern part of France, for sure.
Trip Planning vs AI
Annie: Right, and so much so that you started a website called planyourvacay.com. And you offer itinerary services. And before we started, you said, “Okay, is it okay to mention that?” because I do a similar thing. But you know what? The more the merrier. And whatever people do, don’t blindly trust ChatGPT and other AIs because they are [00:03:00] sycophants that want to tell you that anything you think of is brilliant. And it will just say, “Oh, sure you can do that.”
Yes. Perhaps not.
You might be better off talking to a human who has actually been to those places and can attest to what’s nice and what’s not, and what’s doable, what’s not, what’s the right time to go, and all of that sort of thing, which is what we do on the trip reports anyway.
Jennifer: Exactly, exactly. Especially if you’re going to areas that aren’t, you know, the most popular on the top 10 list. It’s really hard to kind of suss out what information is true and not true, and how to plan out a good itinerary. And yeah, I definitely love to help people through that process.
Annie: Yes, and, you know, Google indexes a lot of websites, but they do that less and less. They take you to the original website less and less. They would rather just answer your question, again, telling you that everything you think is brilliant. And so obviously it’s hard. Like, [00:04:00] unless you knowthe exact name of that museum you want to see, and you can go to that website, and you take the time, then you might never see the official information, the officialannouncements, you know.
Northeast France Overview
Annie: So anyway, today we are going to talk about a beautiful part of France, that I’ve been to somewhat. We’re going to talk about Lille and Metz, and Nancy, Strasbourg and Alsace, and a few extras you can do across the border while you’re visiting these things because I think our time is precious. We can’t all swing around to France five times a year whenever we feel like it. So while you’re here, you might as well make it worth your time.
Why Base in Lille
Annie: Tell us a little bit about Lille as a base for visits to the northeast.
Jennifer: Honestly, I love Lille as a base for many reasons. One,it’s a big enough city that in and of itself it’s just a wonderful city to visit and explore. It has amazing restaurants. It has a very interesting, lively [00:05:00] vibe. It’s a young city as well. It’s a university town. So it’s a great place just to go visit in and of itself. But also it’s a wonderful base if you want to go, as a Canadian, for example, visit the World War I sites in the area. It’s relatively equidistant between the sites in Ypres in Belgium and in Vimy. So it makes for a very good itinerary if you want to kind of explore that area.
If you do, I would recommend a car, but if you were looking for a place to go outside of Paris, if you just wanted to take a train somewhere, Lille is a great place to go to experience French Flemish culture of that area.
Best Time to Visit North
Annie: It’s also a fact that because of climate change, many parts of France are getting impossibly hot, especially in the summer months. And this year in particular, all of the tourism boards and people who crunch the numbers have noticed that there’s a significant uptick in the number of people who are going to the north of France, who are going to Brittany and Normandy [00:06:00] versus the southeast or the southwest, where I’m from, because honestly, I would not recommend.
If you have a choice, and if you must travel in June, July, and August, I would recommend you don’t come to the south of France. I’m sorry. Come in the winter. Come in April, March. Come in February, January. June, July, and August are problematic. So that’s something to consider. And I agree, Lille is a beautiful city, and also it’s really important to consider staying in a city because that way when you’ve had it visiting churches and museums and chateaus and whatever, you can go back to your hotel or to your accommodations in the city, walk outside, enjoy the nightlife, go for a meal, go for a drink. France is a place where life happens in the cities. I mean, I live in a rural village, but at night nothing happens here. Nothing at all. Unless it happens to be the [00:07:00] weekend that we’re having the village celebration or whatever, but that’s just very rare. So if you want a bit of life in the evening, stay in a city.
Jennifer: Yeah. And I would say the other thing for a place in the north, what’s nice is Lille is still open on Sundays, for example. Things do shut down there earlier, like grocery stores we noticed still close at noon on Sunday, but they are open. Whereas if you’re going to some of the smaller towns, on a Sunday, if it happens to be the day that you want to be there, everything might be closed, which we have hit as well.
So I think it’s a really nice place to spend at least… You know, I could spend up to like five days there in a row with lots to do in the area. We’ve gone four times in the last couple of years for concerts, to bring family to go visit the World War I sites. So we go back again and again, and every time we see something new and do something a little bit different.
Annie: Right. So the ones that you’ve driven to from Lille are Vimy Ridge, which is spectacular.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Annie: Beaumont-Hamel.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Annie: [00:08:00] Ypres, and that’s in Belgium. And these are the ones that are easy to get to if you have a car.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Annie: It is possible there’s public transportation to these places, but that is something you’re going to have to investigate. If you hire me or Jennifer to do this for you, we can probably look into it. But honestly, that’s something to be investigated for the specific week when you want to go because there are solutions sometimes, but sometimes it’s only part of the year. Like, Vimy Ridge might have a special bus that they do in special weeks of the year or something, but don’t count on it, is the reality.
Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah.
Annie: And you can do some things with trains as well. I mean, there’s plenty of trains. And it’s always a good idea, if you want to travel by train or by bus, to Google or an AI could do this very well, “Show me all the trains departing from Lille.”
Jennifer: Right.
Annie: All the directions, you know?
And another thing that’s very helpful to know is what is the name of the regional bus company for Lille? Because we have 90-something departments, [00:09:00] and we have 90 names for those departmental buses, so find out the name.
Lille Vibe and Sights
Annie: So you’ve been to Lille five times altogether, and you like the vibe of the city.
Jennifer: I really do. I think, especially in the summer. We’ve gone a little bit in the winter, but mostly in the summer. Everyone’s out on patios. The Vieux Lille is just a joy to sort of walk around. There’s lots of little shops. It feels like a city that’s lived in, so there’s not a lot of, quote-unquote, “tourist shops.” Maybe in the main square, you can buy your magnet and look at your tourist items.
But outside of that, Vieux Lille itself is a bunch of little cafes, independent clothing stores, there’s some vintage shops. And it really feels like people are there on the weekend exploring, locals. You know, there’s a beautiful market on Sunday morning. So it feels like a city where you’re going to go and be able to actually find some treasures that you might want to bring home.
Annie: There’s a big bookstore.
Jennifer: Huge. Yeah.
Annie: There’s a huge bookstore on the [00:10:00] Grand Place in Lillethat I enjoyed a lot.
Jennifer: Yes. There’s one in the De Vieille Bourse, the old stock exchange area where like an outdoor bookstore that might be on your travel. It’s gorgeous.
There’s another time that we went and we explored the Museum of Beaux-Arts, and it was gorgeous. I like museums, but I prefer to walk a city and, especially if it’s nice out, find the little cafe and watch the world go by. But I was so impressed with this museum, and I thought they did an excellent job at curating all these different beautiful pieces of art. And I think it’s one of the bigger ones outside of Paris, actually. So there’s just a lot that you can actually do. There’s places where I look and I’m like, “Oh, that’ll be for the next time I go,” because we still haven’t explored every part of the city.
It is actually also a place that will get concerts and, does have a football team and a soccer team. So it’s also a place where you can go for an event. So we actually went for a Bruce Springsteen concert. And it was just like a fun thing for us to do. “Okay, let’s go see Bruce Springsteen in Lille.” But you’ll see the Ed Sheerans, the Bruce Springsteens of the world will come to Lille [00:11:00] as well. And it’s a nice way if you’re traveling around Europe, you may want to look to see who’s playing in the area and see if you can base a trip around it.
Annie: Yeah. When we went, it was because the basketball events for the Olympics were mostly in Lille, and so that’s why we spent a week there in 2024. It’s an excellent opportunity to go for an event and stay a few extra days.
Eating and Estaminets
Annie: Let’s talk about food in Lille, because they have some good stuff.
Jennifer: I don’t think I’ve actually had a bad meal in Lille. I found the food has good variety. So it has really nice French food, but if you want something more international, it has options there that are also really, really good. It has these little… is it a estaminet?
Annie: Estaminet.
Jennifer: Estaminet. Estaminet, which is like a Flemish tavern, a beer hall, which is now like a pub. And you go there, you’ll get traditional French Flemish food. And I highly recommend trying one of them. There’s several around the city where you can get like, it’s a little heartier food, beef stew. You’ll always get fries. Just some [00:12:00] really, really lovely food there. Last time we were there, we went to this one in Lille, and it was such a great experience. The people were so nice. The food was delicious.
Annie: You mentioned Flemish food, like carbonade. Explain what that is.
Jennifer: It’s a beef stew, but it’s usually cooked in beer, so it’ll have a kind of sweet, sour taste to it. You’ll find it also in Belgium, for sure, and in the Netherlands, actually. They both have versions of it. So it’s definitely like a, a dark beef stew. But the key ingredient I think is the beer, to kind of give it that Flemish flair.
Annie: In Belgium, there’s this thing called waterzooi.
Jennifer: Yes. Yes.
Annie: Tell us about that too.
Jennifer: That’s a soup traditionally made with fish, and also chicken. And it originated, I think, in Ghent, but it’s something that you’ll also find on the French Flemish menus as well, because a French version of it is available in these restaurants, and it’s delicious. Again, it’s a little bit heartier for the traditionally cooler weather in that area, but it’s so, so good.
Annie: Yeah. I have to say, the [00:13:00] best moules-frites I ever had, other than at my house because I make it pretty well too. But the best moules-frites I had was at a restaurant in Lille, and it’s called Aux Moules de Lille, and it’s right off of the Grand Place.
Jennifer: Okay.
Annie: And I thought, okay, we’re right off a touristy area. What is it going to be like? It was stunning. Not because the sauce was anything special, although it was good, but because of the grade of mussels that they use.
They had some nice big juicy mussels. Last month I was in Brittany, and you’d think in Brittany you’d have nice mussels, and I ordered the mussels and, uh-uh. They were teeny. They were overcooked. It was not great.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Annie: So you really have to hand it to them. And I asked the waiter, “Where’d you get these great mussels?” And he said, “Oh, we import them from the Netherlands, as a matter of fact.”
Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah.
Annie: They have great production of mussels there, and mm, stunning.
Jennifer: Yeah. It’s so good. And that’s the thing, like we’ve been to places right on the [00:14:00] main square, and we thought, okay, well, we’re just going to pop in for a sandwich. Oh, touristy, touristy. It was delicious. Like there’s not really “warning: tourist restaurants” in Lille. You can check the ratings because, you know, not every restaurant’s the same quality, but there’s not sort of this, “Hey, watch out for this area. This is where all the tourists go.”
Annie: Well, that’s because Lille is not a super touristy city.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Annie: It’s a real French city. It’s much like Toulouse in that way.
Jennifer: Yes.
Annie: It’s a city that has a lot to offer but is not super touristy, and so the restaurants don’t take the people for granted. Whereas, if you go to many places around, like in Paris, right around where all the tourists congregate, they couldn’t care less what they serve you. They want it efficient, fast, cheap, maximize income, and yeah, they’ll never see you again. Whereas in Lille, it’s not the same thing.
You mention another cafe called Cafe Vedette for lunch.
Jennifer: Yes. That’s right in the heart of the Vieux Lille. It was a rainy, rainy day. It does rain quite a bit in that area. It was a [00:15:00] rainy day, so we just hopped into the first place that we saw to get out of the rain, and it was really cool. We sat in the back of the restaurant, which we thought would be kind of dark and dingy, but it was almost like an open-air restaurant with a covered roof, so it was very light in the back. It was covered by glass,like a tinted glass. So you really felt like you were in a little patio, but all covered inside and, you know, not rained on. And the food was also really, really good there. So it was kind of really like a cool kind of vibe in that restaurant as well.
Annie: Yeah. So we need to move along, so I’ll mention them quickly. you mentioned Artisan Gelato. So it’s called Artisan Gelato.
Jennifer: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Annie: Another place called Mamet for Sunday brunch, and they have six locations in the north of France.
Jennifer: Yeah, I didn’t know they were a chain. They don’t feel like a chain when you go in, but they’re a little bit of a northern French chain.
Annie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Maison Papillon, which is a boulangerie, and it’s open early for pastries. Fantastic. [00:16:00] Fantastic.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Annie: So do spend some time in Lille. It’s a wonderful thing.
Hotel Picks and Accor
Annie: So you recommend a few hotels. I’ll put links in the show notes. You tend to like the Accor brand hotels, and so do I. So let’s discuss why.
Jennifer: I like them because you know what you’re going to get. You know they’re going to be clean. They often have a really nice lobby area, especially if you get to the Novotels or the Mercures. And value for money for me is very high. And if you do start to use them, I find their actual loyalty program is very good as well.
Annie: Yeah.
Jennifer: So if we’re staying in a city, we tend to look for Accor brand hotels as a starting point.
Annie: And that would be ibis, ibis Styles, Novotel, Mercure.
Jennifer: Mercure, Mama Shelter. And they have some newer brands popping up, like Tribe is one of them.
Annie: Because people want the boutique hotel feel.
Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Annie: Trust me, we have a lot of boutique hotels in the southwest.
Some of them are like, ” Ooh, what’s happening here?” So nice to have a big [00:17:00] brand that has a reputation to preserve, who wants to do the right thing and have nice, comfortable, upgraded rooms and things like that. And I find Accor is good for that.
Jennifer: Yeah, I find that too. They’re very consistent. I still look at the reviews again if there’s some that are managed a little bit better than others, but I do find, for consistency, that brand is really good. And I do think the common spaces are different from hotel to hotel, so you know what you’re going to get from the room perspective, but the feel of the hotel will be different from city to city, from place to place.
Annie: And for people who are traveling with an EV, they usually have EV chargers. They are very aware of the need, and I think they will get better as they go along, you know? It’s not perfect, but they’re trying.
Jennifer: And the last thing I’ll say about this brand, if you’re looking as a family, looking for rooms, like when we traveled to Lille the first time in 2023, we were a group with multiple families that wanted rooms where the kids could stay in the room with the parents. And honestly, boutique hotel, we didn’t [00:18:00] see a lot of options. Whereas the Novotel in particular in Lille, if you’re looking, has the suites hotels that accommodate. They’ll have a sofa bed in the room, or you can get a larger room that will accommodate up to two kids in addition to the parents and comfortable, at a good price. So that was why we actually even started looking at those brands when we were traveling earlier was how to accommodate families. And everywhere we went, we found that that brand did a good job for that.
Driving and Parking Tips
Annie: And as far as what to do around Lille, of course explore the Vieux Lille.
Jennifer: Mm-hmm.
Annie: That’s the city center, which is true in most French cities, always go to the city center. And I should say, if you are coming by car, don’t just point your GPS to Lille. Look beforehand and, typically if you don’t know anything about a city, park near the cathedral. If there’s a cathedral, just say, “Okay, what’s the parking area closest to the cathedral of blah?” And typically you will be right there in the city center. And if that’s not [00:19:00] an option, the port cities, just say, “I want to be close to the port,” because that’s always in the the heart of the city. Or the very least, as you enter a city, look for signs. Every city in France has these blue signs with a big P for parking.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Annie: Some of them have the number, like their underground parking garages or even overground. They count the number of spots that are left, and you have a digital display that says, ” We have 100 spots left, we have zero spots left,” whatever, and follow those signs. But I find it that it’s best before I go somewhere to look at the parking situation and tell my GPS to take me to that parking area.
Jennifer: Yeah. We plan our journey by the parking.We made that mistake early on where were like, “Oh, let’s just put the GPS to the hotel, and I’m sure we’ll find parking.” And there were some very funny stories around that. No, when we book a hotel, we set our GPS to the parking lot that we’re going to use next to the hotel and not the hotel itself. Because it’s not [00:20:00] always an easy, ” Oh, the parking’s going to be right next door.” I believe I bookmarked it for you, I’ll make sure I do for the notes. There’s a great parking lot close to the Novotel that we’ve stayed most at in Lille, but it’s also a great location if you’re just staying in Lille, because it’s right there in the heart of the city. But to get to it off the highway is really easy. So there’s one that we’ve used multiple times now as a reliable parking spot.
Annie: I don’t see it, but do send me the name of that parking area.I’ll put it in the show notes. Yeah, so I don’t always park at the hotel if the hotel doesn’t have a parking area or doesn’t have EV chargers. I will find one near the hotel, and that’s just as good.
All right. Very good. In Lille, you also like the Vieille Bourse, which is the open book market that you mentioned earlier, the Palais des Beaux-Arts, which you also mentioned, and then you mentioned some day trips for Canadians.
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WWI Day Trips from Lille
Annie: Let’s go a little bit more into the World War I [00:21:00] sites. Let’s talk about the one in Belgium, Ypres. We haven’t really discussed it very much. Tell us about what that’s like.
Jennifer: So it’s actually multiple sites for a Canadian to visit around Ypres. And to do the main sites or the most common sites would take about half a day, plan about four or five hours to do. There’s about four or five of them, but they’re very close together, so you could start in one and kind of do a loop around and end back in the town of Ypres, which is a beautiful town in and of itself to explore.
One tip that we always give is every night in Ypres they do a ceremony called the Menin Gate Last Post, where 365 days a year for 15 minutes, they celebrate and recognize one of the Commonwealth, whether it’s regiments, soldiers, et cetera. They do this every night, every day of the year, including Christmas, including New Year’s, and it’s a beautiful ceremony to attend.
So our suggestion in traveling there is to look to do maybe like a half day where you start in the afternoon up in Ypres and you do all the sites. You end [00:22:00] in Ypres itself. You have a nice dinner on the square. They have lots of patios, and then you head over to the Menin Gate and do that, which ends at like 8:15, and then you’re back in Lille around 9 o’clock at night, depending on if you want to stay afterwards. It’s all little country roads. It’s easy to drive. You do need to drive there, unless you’re doing an organized tour. I don’t think I’ve seen a bus around there. It is very, very beautiful, that area to explore.
Annie: Okay. What else?
Jennifer: So yeah, I would definitely do that for about a half a day.
WWI Sites Day Plan
Jennifer: And then if you wanted to then explore the World War I sites on the French side, then you do Beaumont-Hamel and Vimy. Those are the main ones. I think you can definitely deep dive and spend multiple days exploring the different memorials, the cemeteries, the sites in the area. There’s lots. But if you were wanting to get sort of the highlights of the area, the ones that I would say you absolutely should do are Beaumont-Hamel and Vimy. Vimy is about 30 minutes from Lille, so it is pretty easy to get to. [00:23:00] And Beaumont-Hamel is a bit further. It’s over an hour to get to.
So what we usually recommend is either start your day in Beaumont-Hamel, the furthest point, stop in Arras for lunch, and then head out to Vimy to end the day and head back to Lille. If you were, say, doing a World War I and World War II trip, then I would say, start at Vimy in the morning, head to Arras for lunch, then do Beaumont-Hamel, and then head to the coast. You’re not that far from beautiful places like Deauville or Étretat or Honfleur, so it is really nice if you are heading on your way down to go to Juno Beach to start your day doing pretty heavy emotional content as a Canadian, and then end your day on this beautiful coast of France if you were tying it in.
If you’re heading north, then it makes sense to start furthest away and head back to Lille and use that an an excuse.
Annie: Right. Right.
Vimy Ridge Guide Tips
Annie: We mentioned Vimy Ridge a lot.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Annie: We also did a whole episode, it was episode 519, called “Exploring Vimy Ridge,” if you would like to hear more about the history, because I had one of the [00:24:00] tour guides from Vimy Ridge on that episode, and he did a fantastic job explaining. It’s a good primer, but of course also ask the tour guides that are there that day, obviously.
Jennifer: Yeah. I actually think that’s an excellent episode. So Felix was the guide. I remember I was listening to it.
Annie: Yeah.
Jennifer: We went to Vimy Ridge probably a week after the episode dropped. We were going for… I don’t know, we’re bringing some friends or one of the ceremonies, and I met Felix. I met the guide.
Annie: Oh.
Jennifer: I told him, “Hey, I heard your episode. It was excellent.” He was so shy, but he’s really nice.
Annie: He’s a nice kid. He’s a nice guy, really. He’s a nice guy.
Jennifer: Really.
Annie: Yeah.
Jennifer: They’re all amazing guides. You know, it’s such a difficult program to actually get into, a very sought-after program for students to participate in, and it’s definitely worth it to talk to the guides and do the tours on those two places.
Annie: Yep. Wonderful. Okay, so this is all Lille.
Metz Underrated Gem
Annie: Let’s now move on to Metz. Also we’ve done a whole episode about Metz, but let’s talk about it because it’s definitely underrated, and I think it deserves a bit of attention.
Jennifer: It’s [00:25:00] wonderful. You know what’s funny, in prepping to chat with you today, I was looking through my photos of Metz and like, “Oh, it’s so beautiful, so wonderful,” and reading a few things, and literally last night I booked a trip to Metz for the Christmas markets in December because they are also highly rated.
Annie: Ah, nice.
Jennifer: The town is highly rated for its Christmas markets as well.
Annie: So is Lille, by the way. Lille is also good for Christmas markets.
Jennifer: Oh. Might have to do a loop. I do think Metz is an easy place to get to from either Paris or Strasbourg. There’s direct trains. You don’t necessarily need a car to go there. And it’s beautiful. What’s interesting about Metz is that the architecture is very different as you go through the town. You know, there’s the Porte des Allemands, which has this gorgeous gate where it’s a castle-like feel, and then you end up in the Vieux Ville, and it’s a very different style. It’s a little bit, I’d actually say more, quote-unquote, not plain, but it doesn’t have the distinct architecture of, say, Lille or the grandeur of Nancy, but it’s just pretty in and of [00:26:00] itself.
And you walk through the town, and they do these wonderful things where they have streamers through the streets, and they’re just waving in the wind, and it’s just so lovely. And then you turn a corner as you head towards the train station, and you’re like, ” What is this architecture I’m looking at?” It’s like you have the little bit more grandeur. It looks almost like you’ve hit a small Parisian street. So I really think it’s a very interesting place to kind of explore from that perspective.
Annie: The cathedral is is beautiful, magnificent.
Jennifer: And the cathedral, yeah. The cathedral, it’s gorgeous. That stained glass is phenomenal.
Annie: Yeah.
Jennifer: And again, I find this is a town that just really feels not touristy. It feels lived in. It’s lively. It’s another university town. We were there in September, and it was a lovely September night. We were walking around, and the patios were overflowing. There was salsa dancing happening in the middle of the town, so we sat in and took it all in and just really enjoyed exploring it.
Annie: Yeah, andyou have the Pompidou Metz as well, which I loved.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Annie: Not everybody loves modern art, but I [00:27:00] loved it.
Jennifer: You know, I can say modern art’s not my favorite, and I still loved it. I thoughtjust the architecture was beautiful, and like it or not, it’s still interesting to kind of go in and explore and see how they set up all the exhibits, because it was stunning. It was stunning.
Annie: Yeah.
Metz Food Shops Stays
Annie: I will recommend a restaurant in Metz. It’s not a French restaurant, it’s an Italian restaurant. We had a lovely, lovely dinner at Martina Ristorante. You have to book ahead of time because it’s busy, but this is the sort of Italian food I cannot make at home, which I always appreciate, because if I can make it better at home, why?
Jennifer: Yeah.
Annie: But this one, mm, lovely, lovely, lovely. Yep.
Jennifer: Yeah, and the one thing I will say about Metz, it tends to be closed on Sunday, all the stores.
Annie: Yeah.
Jennifer: We really like the stores. Again, like these small little boutiques, just a place where you can find little things to bring home that are useful, practical, and yet come from Metz. You know what I mean? Like, you have that little affinity to them because they’re like a little treasure to bring home.
But yeah, on Sunday the stores are closed, and from a planning [00:28:00] perspective, that’s when we went to the Centre Pompidou. That’s when we went to go to the Porte des Allemands. We knew that we wouldn’t get our shopping in on Sunday, so we shopped Saturday and spent Sunday just kind of walking around and were able to go to the art exhibits.
Annie: And there’s a Novotel that you recommend there. I’ll put the link in the show notes as well.
Jennifer: Yeah. There’s multiple, like when we go in December, we’re actually going to be staying at an Ibis Styles instead.
Annie: Ibis Styles is fine as well most of the time. Even Ibis, the plain old Ibis is fine most of the time. Some cities, they just have an Ibis. They don’t have a Novotel or whatever. It’s fine.
Jennifer: It’s fine.
Annie: Yeah.
Jennifer: Yeah. So I do think it’s a lovely, lovely place to go. You could do it as a day trip. I think it’s worth more. I do think the liveliness of the city at night, and the cathedral at night, and the Temple Neuf was so beautiful at night. It’s definitely worth to me just to experience the city for at least an overnight in this area.
Annie: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you mentioned Place Saint-Louis where they do salsa dancing, the lively restaurants and all of [00:29:00] that. That’s fantastic.
Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah. It was wonderful.
Annie: And again, if you are coming to France for Christmas, and you want to be less squeezed in than Strasbourg for a Christmas market I bet the ones in Metz are not quite as packed.
Jennifer: I’ll let you know after we go.
Annie: Yeah.
Jennifer: It looks wonderful. I will say this too, it is perfectly positioned to tie into a Strasbourg trip, but also to tie in if you want to go to Luxembourg or if you want to go over to the Moselle in Germany, which are stunning, and much less touristed but beautiful in its own right. The scenery in those areas are amazing.
Tip, Luxembourg has the cheapest gas by far in Europe. Don’t know why it is. I checked last week just to make sure things hadn’t changed, but it was, if you crossed the border to go to France or to Germany, 30 cents per liter cheaper. So, you know, if you are driving in the area, you are within an hour, maybe even closer to the border, but it’s an hour of some really nice areas in Luxembourg. It’s worth [00:30:00] it for a little pit stop to get gas along the way. It’s a beautiful round trip that you could do to do the Roman amphitheaters of Trier. The town of Luxembourg itself is gorgeous, and then there’s vineyards all the way around there, and to stop in Metz as part of that loop would be just such a wonderful little vacation.
Annie: Yeah. So you mentioned a place called Canada Venture? That’s interesting.
Jennifer: Yeah. So when we went, we had been living in Europe for about four or five months, and so when we showed up and we were looking for restaurants, we saw this one and, we were kind of like, “Oh, Canada, we should go in and check it out.” It is a really cool restaurant. Inside it’s kind of set up like a cabin in Quebec kind of style, and they do have poutine and some of the other Canadian treats, and it was pretty good.
If you’re visiting from Canada, you probably don’t need to go there necessarily because you can get that at home. You’re there on vacation. But I think it’s kind of fun to try a French version of Canadian. It was definitely a nice place to go and a [00:31:00] very fun atmosphere inside.
Annie: Yeah, and the other one you mentioned is Les Arts & Metiers for a lunch spot.
Jennifer: Yeah. That one is a little bit over from the train station. It was one of those places that we actually found open on Sunday, and it was just like a really lovely patio in a nice, very tree-lined street. It wasn’t in a square, but it felt like there was a lot of locals out walking on a nice Sunday afternoon. There was a lot of people that were walking on the streets. It was really nice. I would recommend it.
Annie: So we are going to have a full episode with Elyse on Metz, and it’s going to be episode 625. It’s not out yet, but it’ll be out there for people who want more details about Metz.
Very good.
Nancy Timing Weather
Annie: Let’s move on to Nancy.
Jennifer: Well, my experience in Nancy, I think, is maybe one of those, not necessarily cautionary tales, but just an example of where you really have to think about timing sometimes when you go to certain cities, because we went to Nancy over New Year’s Eve last year. We were coming back from Canada, stopping in Paris for a couple days. [00:32:00] Wonderful. And then we didn’t want to go back to the Netherlands right away, so we did a little stop in Nancy.
I thought the city was beautiful. The Art Nouveau architecture, stunning. It was a very walkable city, and it looked like it would be a great place to go in the summer or spring or fall. But when we were there…
Annie: Let me guess. I don’t know what you’re going to say. But I think you’re going to say it was dead as a doorknob.
Jennifer: Dead. We didn’t actually end up going to the fireworks on New Year’s Eve, that was taking place in the major town square, which is called Place Stanislas. Beautiful, beautiful town square. Partially because we were jet lagged, and partially because it was really cold. And I say this as someone who was coming from Canada. I had my bundled up big jacket. I was coming from minus 17 or whatever it was in Ottawa when we were there. But even though it was minus five or something like that, if you looked at the temperature, it felt colder.
Annie: Pay attention, folks. If a Canadian tells you it’s cold in Nancy, pay attention.
Jennifer: It’s cold. And afterwards, actually, I listened [00:33:00] to one of the episodes that you did on Nancy, and I think it was Elyse that was talking about how cold it is, and how it’s biting cold. And it’s the kind of cold that gets into your bones. It’s very wet cold. So while we did definitely enjoy walking during the day when it was sunny out, it was crisp, but it was December, we expected that, in the evening, we found that we really wanted to get back inside. And because it was New Year’s Eve going into the new year, there wasn’t a lot of inside to do.
Annie: Right. Right. People are at home celebrating.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Annie: And, you know, people have this idea that in France, everybody’s going to be out celebrating the new year. No. Very few places in France have big outside public New Year’s celebrations. We used to have more, but they are typically times when people drink a lot, and if you’re going to drink a lot, do it at home. It’s safer.
Jennifer: The city itself has half a million people. So you do think, “Oh, well, at least it’ll be a little bit open on New Year’s Day, for some people who want to get out.” There were two restaurants open in the entire downtown [00:34:00] area that we could find. Of course, they were packed to the brim. There was still a Christmas market that was open. Mostly it was just food, and so we ended up there having a sausage and of course, in wonderful France fashion, and especially in that area, there was a champagne bar in the Christmas market that had heaters in it so that you could stand there. So we had our sausage and champagne. And it was still lovely, but there was so many times when we turned around and we were like, “Oh my God, look at this cute little alley, full of restaurants, and look at this beautiful park.” And there was a lot of areas that were nice to walk through, but would have been nice to see open.
Annie: Yeah.
Jennifer: There’s even an amazing market there that gets talked about a lot, and we thought, “Okay, the last day, the market’s supposed to be open today.” And it was not.
Annie: Right. So Nancy might be a very good place to go if you have to visit France in the summer.
Jennifer: Yes.
Annie: Because even though it’s going to get hot in the day, it will cool off at night. So that’s a lot more livable than a place like Toulouse, where it gets hot [00:35:00] and it stays hot for days and days and days and days and days.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Annie: Nancy is probably going to get like to 32, 33, 35, but then at night it’s 19, 17, 18 degrees. That’s all degrees C. That’s probably what, 100, and then at night it cools off to 60s or 70s or whatever.So that’s a lot more livable in the summer, so time it right.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Annie: And Nancy is a lovely place. We had an episode about it long ago. We might need to revisit it. It was episode 225, so it was a long, long time ago. But of course, not that much has changed in Nancy in the meantime.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Annie: I mean, L’Ecole de Nancy, La Villa Majorelle, it’s all still there.
Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah, and it’s definitely on our list to go back in the summer to kind of really take advantage of it, because I looked back at the pictures we took, and it is really, really pretty. A really pretty place to go. And unique because of the Art Nouveau architecture as well.
Annie: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Okay.
Strasbourg Alsace Summer
Annie: Strasbourg and Alsace in the summer, which is not when people tend to go, [00:36:00] but we need to hurry up. We’ve been talking a long time.
Jennifer: Yeah, I know.
Annie: Let’s quickly say Strasbourg and Alsace in the summer, what would you do in that area?
Jennifer: Lots of outdoor things. It is beautiful. I keep using the word beautiful, but the town itself just comes alive. A lot of people do think of Strasbourg as a town for Christmas markets.
Annie: And it is.
Jennifer: It is. It’s definitely a place to go. Colmar, the little towns around there as well. But what you don’t get to see when you’re immersed in a town of Christmas markets is the actual town itself. Oftentimes it’s hard to look up and see the architecture that’s around you and see the area that’s around you because you’re going from booth to booth of the Christmas markets.
Annie: You are dazzled by the Christmas market.
Jennifer: That is very true. If you like wine, I think the Alsace wine region, if I had to compare it to the great wine regions of France, it’s, I’d say underrated. The wine is amazing. It has some sparkling wines called the Crémant d’Alsace, which are probably one of your best value for money sparkling wines you can [00:37:00] get in Europe.
Annie: And they’re delicious, and they’re good.
Usually not as dry as champagne.
Jennifer: But you can get them really dry.
Annie: You can? Okay, okay.
Jennifer: You can, because I love a dry champagne, and I love a dry sparkling.
Annie: Crémant? Yeah.
Jennifer: You just have to look for it to actually have the words brut or brut nature, which just means it has lower residual sugars. If it’s brut nature, they’ve added no sugar to the process of making the sparkling wine. So you can look and ask for that style of wine, and you’ll be able to find it. The other thing is Alsatian Riesling. It is amazing. Again, I am not a fan of sweet wines. I love a very dry white wine, and you will find them there. I think people have a notion that some wines, like Riesling, equals sweeter, and it doesn’t have to be.
Annie: No.
Jennifer: And the winemakers of that area, they do such great biodynamic wine. There’s some really interesting wines in that area that I think if you are a wine lover, it’s worthwhile going and visiting.
Annie: The reality is [00:38:00] French people don’t really like sweet wines anymore.
Jennifer: Mm-hmm.
Annie: My mother’s generation. My mother didn’t drink hard. My parents hardly drank any alcohol, but my mother especially only ever drank a sweet wine, and very little of it. So that’s the idea I was raised with, that women drank sweeter wines, right? It’s completely changed. French people, even older French people, just don’t like that much a sweet wine anymore. It’s kind of quaint and old if you do. So you will find a lot of French wines, the tendency is towards drier, and the tendency is also towards less alcohol content. Because people are getting more aware of the fact that drinking wine is not such good thing to do for your health, and so the less alcohol, the better as far as many people are concerned. And so, you’ll find more and more lower alcohol content, lower sweet content.
Jennifer: Yeah. Agreed. I do [00:39:00] think you could easily spend at least a week just exploring the wine area if you like wine.
Annie: Yeah, yeah.
Jennifer: You could spend a ton of time in this area.In Strasbourg itself, you have access to these wonderful shops to try wine, and there’s lots of areas you can go there, and you start to expand out and want to visit some of the vineyards in some of the smaller towns like Eguisheim or Colmar, and you’ll definitely be able to have these tasting rooms where you can go and try their wine, which is really lovely.
Annie: Right.
Wrap Up Northeast France
Annie: Well, I was just going to say we need to bring this to an end.
Jennifer: I know.
Annie: But you did send me some excellent notes and some excellent links and recommendations for specific restaurants and hotels and things like that. So I will do a guest notes page for this episode. So if you go to the main page for this episode, it’s going to be the episode number.I’m not sure what it’s going to be yet because that changes all the time. But, whatever episode number it is, it’s going to be joinusinfrance.com/ and the numeral with that episode number.
And if you [00:40:00] go to that page, you will have the transcript and you will have the guest notes. Always the transcript, sometimes the guest notes. Some guests send me very few notes, and so there’s no point putting them. But you sent me some very good notes, so I will do that.
And definitely explore the northeast part of France. There’s a lot there. And I think generally speaking, it would be so nice if more people explored more of France instead of just the biggies.
Jennifer: Right.
Annie: Like Paris, Normandy, Provence. Try a few other places. They’re lovely.
It is lovely. I keep discovering new places to go. There are the cities that we’ve talked about, there’s also lovely hiking, beautiful forests, lots of outdoor things to do as well. So yeah, I definitely highly recommend this area of France. Wonderful. Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for talking to me again. You’re a, how do you say that? A wealth of information? I don’t know how to say that. I’m losing my English. I speak French too much. I speak way too much French.[00:41:00]
Jennifer: La prochaine fois on peut parler en français.
Annie: Ah, ce serait très bien. Ce serait très bien. Merci beaucoup et à bientôt.
Jennifer: À bientôt.
Annie: Au revoir.
Jennifer: (Mid-roll ad spot)
Thank you, Patrons
Annie: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing that. You can see them at patreon.com/joinus. And a special shout-out this week to my new Join Us in France champions, Nisa Cable and Marcel. What a wonderful name you have, Marcel. I don’t know if it’s your real name, but it’s awesome. Would you join them, too? You can do it for as little as $3 a month, but if you can afford it, I would love to have you pledge more so you can have access to more of the rewards.
And to support Elyse, go to patreon.com/elysart.[00:42:00]
Ad Free Back Catalog Plan
Annie: Now some news for patrons and for anyone who’s thinking about joining. Since episode 487, every new episode of Join Us in France has gone up on Patreon without ads, and also on public platforms, of course, with ads. Now I am going back and adding the older episodes. I started with episode 486, and I’m working my way back towards episode one.
I’m going to do about 10 episodes a week. It takes some time, so, you know, give me a few weeks. But by this time next year, patrons will be able to listen to the whole shebang, to the whole production of this podcast going back to 2014 without ads. Here’s how it works. When you join on Patreon, you get a private podcast feed that you can add to your favorite podcast app. The episodes show up there ad free. I’m dating each older episode with its original release date, so they fall into the right [00:43:00] place in the list instead of flooding your feed. I’m also not sending you an email every time I upload one, because nobody wants 10 emails from me each week.
But you can also listen from the Patreon app. If you don’t want to go looking to add the podcast feed and all that, you can listen from the Patreon app and you’ll get episodes without ads.
This is perfect if you’re new to the podcast and want to go back to the beginning, or if you’re planning a trip to, say, Burgundy, and you want to listen to everything I’ve done on Burgundy over the years. You can do that without having ads every few minutes.
Ad free listening starts at $3 a month. If you sign up for a year, you get two months free, so not even 30 bucks for the year. And yes, it supports the podcast directly, which helps me going and doing this every single week. So go to patreon.com/joinus and thank you everyone who already supports the show. Merci beaucoup.
France Protests Overview
Annie: I want to talk about what’s been going on in France. I know some of [00:44:00] you have seen the pictures, and you’ve emailed me, many of you, and you’re wondering whether you should still come. Short answer, yes. Longer answer, let me tell you what happened, what’s coming, and how to plan around it.
I’m recording this on Wednesday, October 21st, but by the time you hear it, another Saturday of protests will have come and gone, so check the news for the latest. But here’s where things stand today.
On Saturday, October 17th, there were demonstrations all over France against the cost of living, and against under investment into high school education in France. The Interior Ministry counted 550,000 people in the streets. The organizers said it was more like 800,000.
Either way, that’s a lot of people. For comparison, the first big Gilets Jaunes Saturday in November 2018 brought out about 300,000 people. Most of these marches went off without trouble. [00:45:00] People walked, chanted, carried their banners, and went home. But in a number of cities, things went very wrong in the afternoon and evening.
Shops were looted in many cities. Just in Paris, they’re saying probably between 400 and 600 shops were looted. Marseille had many more, Toulouse had some. Anyway, it was in a lot of places. In Marseille, Angers, and Bordeaux, people broke into town halls or prefectures. In Bordeaux, they ransacked the prefect’s official residence. In Lyon, a branch of the tourist office was ransacked and set on fire, and in Limoges, the town hall, a beautiful building from the 1880s, was largely destroyed by fire, and this one really hurt to see.
The Interior Ministry says more than 2,300 people were taken into custody, and nearly 1,000 police officers and gendarme were injured. The Retail Federation estimates that about 1,500 shops were damaged.
The [00:46:00] Interior Minister, Laurent Nunez, admitted that there was a loss of control in some cities, even though 60,000 police officers and gendarme were out on duty that day. So I’m not going to tell you it was nothing. It was the worst day of unrest France has seen in years.
Why People Are Angry
Annie: What are people angry about?
Mostly the cost of living, and fuel is a big part of it. In September, diesel was around 2.3 euros a liter, which is nearly 9 euros a gallon. In 2018, when the Gilets Jaunes started, it was around a euro 45. People in rural France who have to drive to work feel every cent of that.
On top of that, you have rent, groceries, energy bills, and wages that have not kept up. And you have the high school students. They’ve been blocking their schools since mid-September. They’re protesting rundown buildings, teacher shortages, and the stress of Parcoursup, the national platform that decides who gets into which university [00:47:00] program.
Many of them were asking for 10 billion euros to be invested in schools. On the 17th, unions, youth organizations, some Gilets Jaunes groups and others marched with them. And I should say that young people are also very stressed about what the future holds for them, and we probably have AI to thank for that because they don’t know what to study to be able to make a good wage.
Annie: But let me tell you what I told my patrons last weekend. Of course, I stayed up watching and wrote about this on Monday and shared with my patrons first. I really have a lot of sympathy for genuine protest. The students have a point, and low wages are a real problem, but nothing excuses burning down a town hall or looting a shop, and nothing excuses police violence either.
Several teenagers have been seriously injured by police weapons since September, and it’s a catch-22. The more violent the protests get, the harder the police respond, and the harder the police respond, the angrier people get. [00:48:00] France has to find a way out of that, and it’s not going to happen overnight.
Macron Response And Curfews
Annie: When President Macron spoke on television Sunday evening on the 18th, he condemned the violence and promised quick help for shopkeepers whose businesses were damaged. He said he was going to the Gulf countries to secure fuel and gas supplies. He asked for the Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, to bring students, teachers, unions, employers, and local officials together this week to work on concrete proposals.
Whether that calms anything down, we’ll see. The people calling for more protests have already said it’s not enough, and I think Macron talked but accomplished very little. He’s still very much liked outside of France, but not in France, is the reality.
In the meantime, several cities put curfews in place. If you’re traveling, the details matter. These are not citywide lockdowns. In Paris, the curfew ran from 11:00 PM to 6:00 AM in specific areas [00:49:00] such as around Place de la République and Châtelet Les Halles. Châtelet Les Halles is not normally a big center of protests, but it is this time around definitely.
In Bordeaux, Lille, and Nice, the curfews apply only to unaccompanied minors and only in certain neighborhoods. In Lyon, it covered the very center of town for one night, and the prefecture made a point of saying that bars, restaurants, cinemas, and public transport stayed open. So if you’re a tourist having dinner in Paris, the practical effect is that you should not plan to hang around Place de la République at midnight, okay? That’s about it.
Now for this weekend and weekends afterwards, a new day of protests has been called for Saturday, October 24th. So that’s the day before this episode comes out. La France Insoumise, that’s a very far left-wing political party, says there are nearly 400 meeting points around the country.
In Toulouse, where I live, organizing are calling it Acte [00:50:00] II. That’s exactly the vocabulary the Gilets Jaunes used in 2018. They said Acte I, Acte II, Acte III every Saturday for months. It went on for a year. Nobody has announced a calendar beyond this Saturday, but my guess is that this will continue on Saturdays for at least a few weeks, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it went on until the elections next April.
The government is preparing for what it calls a massive response. That means more than 60,000 police and gendarmes. The elite RAID and GIGN units are on standby, helicopters, armored vehicles, and water cannons. Soldiers from Operation Sentinelle, that’s an anti-terrorism patrol that you might have seen at train stations and monuments, will guard sensitive buildings so the police can move around more. Prefects have been told to ban protests that are likely to turn violent and to ban gatherings around the places that were targeted on the 17th.
[00:51:00] Now, here’s the part I really want you to hear. All of this is real. It’s inconvenient. It’s sad. But it is very localized. Protests in France follow a pattern.
They happen in city centers. They gather at the same big squares in each city, the ones where marches always start. They happen mostly on Saturday afternoons, and when there is trouble, it usually comes late in the afternoon and in the evening after the peaceful marchers have gone home.
That leaves you an enormous amount of France. Every village, every vineyard, every hiking trail, every chateau in the countryside, every beach, every market town, and six days out of seven, even big cities are just themselves. On a Tuesday in Lyon, you’d have no idea anything happened, except maybe some plywood over a shop window.
I’m going to the Dordogne for a few days next week, and I’m not worried at all. [00:52:00] I’ll be walking around villages, visiting a few sites that I haven’t seen, that I want to see before they close for the winter, and probably eat too much. If something happens in Périgueux on a Saturday, that’s the big city around there, I’ll go somewhere else. You know, that’s the thing about France. There’s always somewhere else to go.
When the Gilets Jaunes were out every Saturday in 2018 and 2019, millions of tourists still came to France and had a good time. The same was true during the pension protests in 2023.
I’m not saying it’s nothing. I’m saying it’s manageable if you plan a little.
Travel Tips During Protests
Annie: So here are a few practical things. First, plan your Saturdays differently. If you’re based in a big city on a Saturday while this is going on, make that day your day trip day. Go to a small town, to a vineyard, to a country market or a hike. Save the city center for other days, Sunday through Friday, probably.
Second, if you’re driving, don’t leave your car parked on the street in a city center on a [00:53:00] Saturday night because cars get burned. Use an underground garage, or better yet, stay outside of the center that night. Or don’t have a car, that works, too. And keep your tank above half, because if people go back to blocking roundabouts and fuel depots like they did in 2018, you don’t want to be running on empty. Or use an EV. You can just plug that in. We have a lot of plugs in France.
Third, check before you go. Each prefecture posts its curfews and protest bans on its website and social media accounts. Museums post closures on their own website. Check on the morning of your visit, not the week before. That’s really important. You have to check right before you go.
Fourth, if you see a crowd gathering, walk the other way. Don’t stop to take pictures. Tear gas does not care that you’re a tourist, and if the police tell you to move, move.
Fifth, read your own government’s advice. The US Embassy put out an alert on Monday. It doesn’t tell people not to come. It [00:54:00] says to stay away from protests, follow local media for curfews, and check transport before you leave, because in Paris, the metro gets cut off quite a bit. And Toulouse, I mean, every city, if there’s a protest, they will cut off public transportation, some stations anyway. And allow extra time. That’s sensible, and that’s what I tell you to do.
Now, if you’re wondering about travel insurance, read your policy now. Many policies won’t cover a cancellation just because there are protests at your destination. I am working on a full episode about how to handle yourself if you end up near a protest in France. It’ll come out next Sunday on November 1st.
One more thing. Watch how this gets covered where you live. Within hours of the riots, some people were using the pictures as proof that France is dangerous, that it’s falling apart, or that it’s all the fault of immigrants or whatever group they already wanted to blame.
Pictures of a burning building go around the world in minutes. Pictures of half a million people marching [00:55:00] peacefully and going home don’t. And it was never about immigrants, okay?
Now, France has a long tradition of taking to the streets: “Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry men. This is the music of a people who will not be slaves again.”
Shouldn’t sing, I have a terrible throat. I have a cold. But this is what comes to mind. Yeah, we do this, okay? French people do this. We kind of invented the revolution. I mean, the American Revolution came first, but we made it big and bloody, didn’t we?
And sometimes things end badly, but that’s how the French tell their government that something has to change, and sometimes the government listens. I hope they do.
So I’ll be honest with you, France is going through a rough patch. Money is tight, the debt is very high, people are tired, and the presidential election is six months away.
Young French people don’t have a lot of hope right now, but I’ve lived here long enough to watch France go [00:56:00] through rough patches before and come out the other side. Sometimes the best time to move forward is right after you’ve hit bottom. Meanwhile, the bakeries open every morning, the markets set up every week, and France is still France.
Come and see it. Just maybe don’t spend your Saturday afternoons in the middle of a big city for the next few weeks, okay?
Closing Notes And Next Episode
Annie: One more thing before you go. If you like the podcast, the newsletter is worth your inbox. It’s short, comes out around each episode, and it’s the place I actually talk about what’s going on behind the scenes, not just the show notes. And you can sign up at joinusinfrance.com/newsletter.
My thanks to podcast editors Anne and Christian Cotovan.
Next week on the podcast
Annie: Next week on the podcast, I chat with a few people who were in the middle of those demonstrations on October 17th and what happened to them.
Thank you so much for listening, sorry about my voice, and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together and my voice will be all [00:57:00] fixed. Au revoir.
Copyright
Annie Sargent: The join us in France Travel Podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and copyright 2026 by Addicted to France. It is released under a Creative Commons, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.[00:58:00][00:59:00]
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