523 - Join Us in France Travel Podcast

Discussed in this Episode

Normandy
American Cemetery
Utah Beach
Caen Memorial Museum
Loire Valley
Loches
Château de Chenonceau
Larivau
Arcachon
Dune du Pilat
Lyon
Chamonix
Aiguille du Midi
Annecy
Rustignano (Italy)
Menton
Monaco
Èze
Cap d'Ail
Eden Plage Mala
Mont Blanc
French Alps
Halles de Bacalan (Bordeaux)
private beaches in Cap d'Ail (Eden Plage Mala)
Hot air ballooning at Château de Chenonceau
hiking in Chamonix
paragliding (parapente) in Chamonix and Dune du Pilat
watching the Tour de France
Fête de la Musique in Lyon
running from Monaco to Menton
Mont Blanc cable car ride
Olympic torch relay in Chamonix

[00:00:15] Annie: This is Join Us in France, episode 523, cinq cent vingt trois.

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

[00:00:31] Annie: Today, I bring you a trip report with Emily Whimster about her thrilling adventures roadtripping through France with older teens.

Discover the best spots, funny mishaps, and practical tips for family travel. I hope you tune in to learn how to make the most of your trip to France.

Suport the Podcast

[00:00:51] Annie: This podcast is supported by donors and listeners who buy my tours and services, including my Itinerary Consult Service, my GPS self-guided tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, or take a day trip with me around the southwest in my electric car. You can browse all of that in my boutique: joinusinfrance.com/boutique. And Patreon supporters get new episodes as soon as they are ready and ad-free. If that sounds good to you, be like them, follow the link in the show notes.

Bootcamp 2025

[00:01:21] Annie: Right now at the boutique, you’ll also find the information page for the Bootcamp 2025. Bootcamp is a once a year opportunity to join me and Elyse in France for real. I am delighted to see that we have several returned bootcampers this year again, and many new bootcampers as well.

When people want to do something again, that’s a good sign that it was a great time. We’d love to have you join us as well. Take a look. It’ll probably sell out soon because there’s only a handful of seats left.

Magazine part of the Podcast

[00:01:56] Annie: For the magazine part of the podcast, after the interview today, I’ll discuss the reopening of Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral and how you can get a ticket to visit it yourself, as well as an update on Igor, the retired guide dog, and a tiny bit about French politics.

Introduction and Guest Welcome

[00:02:22] Annie: Bonjour, Emily Whimster, and welcome to Join Us in France.

[00:02:26] Emily: Bonjour Annie, thank you for having me.

[00:02:28] Annie: It’s a pleasure having you all the way from…

[00:02:32] Emily: Australia.

[00:02:33] Annie: Australia. I wasn’t sure if it was Australia or New Zealand.

[00:02:36] Emily: Well, I’m from New Zealand, but I live in Australia now, so my partner and our family, we traveled from Australia.

[00:02:43] Annie: Okay, wonderful, wonderful. Well, welcome to the show.

Planning the French Road Trip

[00:02:46] Annie: So today, we’re going to talk about your road trip with your older teens. You don’t look old enough to have older teens, but you do. And you went all over the creation, really.

[00:03:01] Emily: I know, we really did a road trip around the country.

[00:03:05] Annie: So tell us what did you do? What did you love? Take it away.

[00:03:10] Emily: So, we decided that we were going to do a trip to France. We used the excuse of my partner’s 50th for the trip, but I think really we all really wanted to have a look, a trip around Europe. And we all had a love for France. We started out in Paris and then we decided, we had a bit of a toss up about whether we were going to travel by car or train, or how we were going to get around.

And, I’d been to France a few times but I’d never driven, and I thought it would be awesome to get off the main train lines, and just travel around and be able to stop at cafes or shops as we went past. So, yeah!

So we started in Paris but we really didn’t spend a long time there and we drove to Normandy, and then we went to Loches, and then we went to Larivau and we visited Arcachon and Dune du Pilat on a day trip. And then we travelled to Lyon, and we went to Chamonix, we did a little trip through Aosta in Italy to get to Menton, because we decided that was the most direct route, and while we were there, we went to visit, I think you say it, is it Èze?

[00:04:22] Annie: Yeah. Èze.

[00:04:23] Emily: We went through Monaco during that trip. That was a day trip for us as well. And then we headed into Italy, because we wanted to watch the Tour de France. And this year it was a bit special that it started in Florence, I believe it was the first time it started outside of France because of the Olympics.

So we spent our last couple of days over there in Florence in Rostignano, following the tour and flew out of Milan.

[00:04:50] Annie: Right, so this trip was in June to early July 2024.

[00:04:56] Emily: Yes, that’s right. We left mid June and flew back in the first week of July.

[00:05:01] Annie: So it was a two week trip?

[00:05:03] Emily: Yeah, almost three weeks, I think. We were in France and Italy for 18 days.

[00:05:10] Annie: All right. And it was you, your partner, and…

[00:05:13] Emily: Yeah, his daughter who’s 20, and son who’s 16.

[00:05:18] Annie: Wow. So yeah, these are grownups, I mean, almost. The 16 year old, not quite, but almost, almost.

[00:05:24] Emily: Yeah, definitely. I mean, it definitely felt like we were traveling with other adults that we could, we sort of planned around and had these thoughts of what does everyone want to do each day. And it was nice because Ryan’s daughter’s away at university now, so it was a good time for us to catch up as well and do activities together.

Style of Travel

[00:05:42] Annie: Right, so what’s your style of travel? Are you kind of go, go, go? Did you plan stuff every day? Were you more like, okay, well, we will decide when we get there?

[00:05:52] Emily: No, we were more decide when we get there, so I think the thing that we were conscious of was, it was getting towards the start of summer and I wasn’t quite sure when schools broke up for holidays, so I thought in advance, because we sort of had a budget with four adults travelling, we thought, okay, we have our budget, so I didn’t want the travel. And especially with the Olympics coming up, to get out of control, so we booked ahead in terms of locations that we were going to visit and hotels or accommodation, but aside from that on our day to day activities, we really didn’t have plans. So that we were able to sort of take what we were feeling each day, and we probably didn’t want to rush, rush, rush, but we also wanted to enjoy something in each spot.

[00:06:37] Annie: Right, right.

Exploring Normandy and Loire Valley

[00:06:38] Annie: I mean, it was Normandy, a bit of Loire, just driving to Normandy, I assume.

[00:06:45] Emily: Yes.

[00:06:46] Annie: How much of Normandy did you see?

[00:06:48] Emily: So we mostly went around the American Cemetery and out to the beaches and we visited a couple, I think we went to Utah and then to one further down the coast. And we also visited the Caen Museum, the Memorial Museum.

[00:07:05] Annie: Yes, in Caen, yes. Right. What did you think of that? I think it’s one of the ones that you have to do.

[00:07:11] Emily: Oh definitely, yes. We stayed at a accommodation just around the corner from there actually and spent a few hours, many hours going through the museum. And that was really something, it’s quite sobering.

It’s a really impressive museum and there’s a lot of information. I had been there before actually but it was something that my partner hadn’t and he’s quite interested in sort of history and the war flying and things like that. So it was interesting to see where the paratroopers landed. And it was particularly interesting driving from Paris as we came into Normandy thinking you know this is the countryside where people were landing all over the place.

[00:07:49] Emily: It was quite sobering as well, seeing, you know we were expecting to see more older buildings, and obviously a lot of those had been destroyed during the war, so everything was, when I say modern, you know, post war built. And so that was also quite sobering, seeing that side of things.

[00:08:06] Annie: You said you didn’t have any specific plan for every day, but perhaps you had a list of things that you might do in each place.

[00:08:12] Emily: We had a couple, so I think the things that we had set was the war museum and the war sites, the beaches. We really wanted to see a castle in Loches, the Loire Valley. I had booked hot air ballooning, but we knew that it was touch and go, whether we would have the weather or not. We did get to go, so we were so lucky, because I believe the flights before us and after us were canceled.

[00:08:34] Annie: Oh, wow.

[00:08:35] Emily: So I think, if it’s something that you have your heart set on you probably need to plan a bit longer to have a bigger window in case flights are cancelled. But we were very fortunate and our flight went ahead when planned and it just worked out perfectly.

[00:08:49] Annie: So tell me more details about that. Where did you get off? What happened? Tell me more.

Hot Air Ballooning Adventure

[00:08:54] Emily: Sure, so we decided to take a hot air balloon flight at Chateau de Chenonceau.

We signed up and we weren’t exactly sure what to expect, to be honest, so we had to meet in a paddock and this company took us out to the paddock where we got to be involved with inflating the balloon, which was quite an experience, watching that as it filled up and just seeing the sheer size of this balloon rise up above our heads and then climbed into the basket and off we went.

And it was just a surreal feeling, floating up into the air, and the absolute silence, when the hot air balloon, when the gas wasn’t firing to heat up the balloon. It was amazing, just that silence, and being able to see so far, in every direction, it was just beautiful.

And we floated around with the wind obviously, we just traveled a bit around the castle and changed altitude a little bit so we came down closer to the castle, and then went further up, and traveled a little bit more around the village and the area. And then when it was time to land the pilot chose a landing spot and we came down, and landed next to a, I would say barley field, or wheat field, and it was very picturesque. It was beautiful.

[00:10:07] Annie: Nice, nice. And so how long does the experience take, more or less?

[00:10:11] Emily: It was about an hour’s experience, I think.And my partner and his daughter absolutely loved it. They were straight away, they were like wow, this is amazing. We love the view. They had no problem with heights. It’s probably when his son and I realized we weren’t so great with heights.

And it took us a little while to become accustomed, but once, you know, once we settled down and understood more about how the hot air balloon works, we probably enjoyed it a little more.

[00:10:37] Annie: Yes, yes, yes. And I assume that the people who run this sort of operation are very professional and used this and yeah…

[00:10:44] Emily: Yes, absolutely. And it was nice, when we landed, they had a little table set up and they served up food so we could have that. And it was from the local area. So they told us a little bit about it all and gave us all a certificate for flying and named our flight. So it was quite the experience.

Yeah.

[00:11:00] Annie: That’s wonderful. How much of a budget, more or less, is this per person?

Just a rough idea.

[00:11:05] Emily: I think it was around 250 each.

[00:11:08] Annie: Okay.

[00:11:08] Emily: That’s off the top of my head. So, you know, it was something we would, we did once maybe, but it was for a special occasion and yeah, it was for my partner’s birthday.

[00:11:18] Annie: Yeah, of course, of course. I’m such a chicken, I probably would just faint, so, I can’t do it.

[00:11:23] Emily: I just sign myself up for things that then I regret once I’ve signed myself up for it, and then appreciate it once I’m back on the ground.

[00:11:33] Annie: That’s cool. Very good.

Bordeaux and Dune de Pilat

[00:11:33] Annie: And then you drove to Bordeaux, down the Bordeaux area, and you were staying Bordeaux?

[00:11:39] Emily: No, we stayed in a little, I would say village, called Larivau. It’s a bit out of Bordeaux. It’s getting close to Saint Emilion. And we thought that we would stay there because when we were working out the drive and the map, we knew we wanted to go to Lyon after our stay there.

But we also really wanted to see Dune de Pilat. So that was part of why we chose the Bordeaux region, partly because of the wineries. So the cute little Airbnb we stayed at, that was on a winery. So we could look at the vineyard beneath us and go to the local area. But Arcachon, and Dune de Pilat were nearby.

And my partner, he likes parapenting, I think you call it in France.

[00:12:18] Annie: Oh yeah, yeah.

[00:12:19] Emily: Yeah, we call it paragliding here.

[00:12:21] Annie: Parapente.

Yes.

[00:12:25] Emily: Okay. Well, Dune de Pilat was just covered in Parapentes.

We hiked there and watched all these colorful wings and enjoyed an absolutely amazing view and on the way there we stopped at a market, I need to remember the name of this, we stopped at Halles de Bacalan in Bordeaux.

It was like a market where there were lots of different food options and eateries.

[00:12:53] Annie: You’re going to have to spell that for me.

[00:12:56] Emily: Okay, it is H-A-L-L-E-S

de B-A-C-A-L-A-N

[00:13:06] Annie: Les Halles de Bacalan. Aha, okay. So this is in the town, oh, this is in Bordeaux.

[00:13:13] Emily: Yes.

Les Halles de Bacalan in Bordeaux. Sorry, I should have recognized that name, but I did not, so…

No, that was my terrible accent. But on the way to Arcachon and Dune de Pilat, we stopped there and we enjoyed walking through the halls and seeing so many different food options. I have vague memories as a child of visiting some markets in France where it was more, I would say, more farmer’s markets where there were people selling everything from rabbits to meats and food and clothes, just everything.

And I was really hoping to see some of those again because they were amazing. But I, we didn’t actually come across any on our trip. What we did come across when we asked our host was these, what he called markets. And we weren’t disappointed because the food options were just amazing.

[00:14:04] Annie: Right, so this is a rather big covered market. So in covered markets, well, there’s also some vendors outside, but mostly in the covered markets, you have people who buy a kind of a license to sell in this place and they stay their whole life. I mean, this is a, you know, professionals would do this day in and day out.

It’s pretty hard work because they, most of those markets are open every morning. Some of them close one day a week, some of them don’t do that. So you have to be pretty, you know, assidu, yeah, dedicated. Yes. That’s the word I was looking for. It’s very close to the Wine Museum. So if you go to the wine museum and this one does, at least in the summer months, it’s open all day long.

So it’s from 8 until 11 PM. On Sundays, it is closed at five. And it’s closed on Mondays. That particular one. So probably it’s a pretty big operation with several staff for each store because in Toulouse, most of these food markets, it’s just the one, it’s a one person operation. So, you know, it’s crazy.

[00:15:20] Emily: Yes. No, there were definitely two or three staff at most places and we noticed around lunchtime it seemed like people from work or local businesses probably came in for their lunch. And yeah, there were just so many food options. And it was fantastic. And that was probably where I learned one of my first lessons, which made us laugh, but I ordered us far too many coffees by accident because I was having trouble, like, I had some basic French, I learned French at school and then spent the year, once we booked the trip, using Duolingo, probably much to your disgust, not from a real tutor.

[00:15:58] Annie: That’s fine.

[00:16:00] Emily: It taught me some more sentences and more vocabulary, but I was trying to order decaf cappuccino.

So, I asked for two cappuccinos and one decaf, but instead of getting two cappuccinos plus one decaf, I think I got a decaf coffee, and two cappuccinos. And so I realized that I haven’t worked out how to order that properly and that happened on two occasions so I must need to improve my French on how to ask for a decaf coffee and also one without lactose.

So we found at quite a few of the food places, because my partner’s daughter has a dairy intolerance, that we were trying to ask for sans lactose, and a lot of places said no, sorry, we don’t do that.

How to order beverages in France

[00:16:47] Annie: Right. There’s a lot of places. So if you want to learn more about how to order specific types of beverages, cafes and stuff, we did a whole episode about this. It’s called Cafe Culture in France. It’s episode 228 of the podcast. And there we go into how to say it in French. But it is a fact that most cafes in France will not have lactose free, they will not have oat milk or the non-dairy kind of milks, that other countries use commonly. Because so few French people ask for those that they just feel like they open one for one customer and then they throw it away, because nobody else asks for anything like that for days.

[00:17:28] Emily: That makes sense. And we were completely fine. We were able to find milk on, well it wasn’t cold or refrigerated milk, we could find on the shelf in nearly every supermarket. You call them a casino or a co-op. Yeah, we could find these plastic on the shelf bottles of sans lactose milk.

[00:17:49] Annie: Exactly, yes. And you can find all sorts of things at the grocery store, and usually it’s in the organic section of the store called bio. That means organic. And they will have, you know, almond milk and all sorts of different milk replacements, I guess.

[00:18:07] Emily: Ah, yes. Yeah. That was a great experience anyway. We learned a lot. I was able to laugh at my poor French, and we carried on, yeah, Dune du Pilat was amazing as well.

Lesson Learned with Toilets

[00:18:21] Emily: That’s probably where we learned another lesson along the way that maybe public toilets were different to what we experience over in Australia.

I mean, you know, there’s always a range of what you experience in terms of cleanliness, but we did find that it was harder to find well kept public toilets with sanitary options for women and other things like that.

[00:18:47] Annie: Yeah, no, it’s true that, I mean, I’ve been to the Dune du Pilat, I’m sure I went to the bathroom, I seem to remember that it was pretty rustic, like, you know, wooden kind of huts, and nothing much there, yeah. Yeah, for place that attracts that many people, you would like them to do a little better.

[00:19:05] Emily: Sure. Sure. But I mean, it didn’t detract from the experience.

[00:19:09] Annie: Right. I mean, you can still have a good time, but you’re like, Oh…

[00:19:13] Emily: It is probably just something to be prepared for.

[00:19:15] Annie: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I usually, when I travel, I keep in my purse, I keep, you know, hand sanitizer, some wipes, some tissues because they might run out of toilet paper, you know, so have a little bit on your person to make up for the fact that perhaps these are not the best toilets you’ve ever seen.

[00:19:36] Emily: Yes, your luck may vary, let’s put it that way.

[00:19:40] Annie: So you said there was a lot of paragliders, did you do it?

[00:19:45] Emily: So, my partner did there. Yes, he did, because he, you know, you have to have a license and have a fair bit of, I guess, experience to be able to join in. So he did it there. However, I had a turn in Chamonix as a tandem, which quite a great experience there, yes. So those were two spots that we chose for the paragliding.

Yeah, when we got to Chamonix, it was great, there were lots of different places because I think a lot of people, or tourists, do go there and try and do these tandem Parapentes. And so I ended up just getting a brochure out of our Airbnb that was on the, in the apartment building, to call this person.

And he was very accommodating. He said, yes, the weather’s great tomorrow morning. And he helped out. And my partner had his own wing. So we hiked, went up in the cable car together and we were able to take off at the same time, so that we were in the air together, so that was really neat as well.

[00:20:42] Annie: Wow. That’s cool.

[00:20:43] Emily: That was cool.

[00:20:45] Annie: That would fright.. that would also kill me. I’m never doing that, but, wow.

[00:20:52] Emily: Yeah, no, it probably almost did me when he asked if I wanted to hold the controls or like, you know, the strings to control the wing. Yeah, no, I was saying no, no, no, and he’s like, yes, yes, yes, just take them.

[00:21:08] Annie: And again, I’m assuming this was a very professional kind of outfit, you felt safe, I mean, afraid, but safe.

[00:21:16] Emily: Yes, a hundred percent. Both of those at the same time. Very much. No, I think we found everywhere that we went to partake in a tourist activity that they were very professional and we had great experiences with it, with all the activities we joined in.

[00:21:34] Annie: Yeah, yeah. And typically, you know, I can vouch for this. When you go to somewhere for doing canoeing, or paragliding, or ziplines, or ballooning, or whatever the active kind of activity you want to do. Typically, they have very good, very well trained people on staff that can, you know, help you have a good experience.

[00:21:57] Emily: And it felt like they all had support people, like it wasn’t like they were just by themselves. They either worked out of a shop front or they had, like this tandem pilot, I guess you would call him, he was friends with many other pilots there, and so he didn’t speak a lot of English.

And my partner had a few questions because I think whenever you fly in a new place, you need to get information about the wind, and what it’s doing and launch sites and landing spots.

So he was able to link us together with some of the other pilots who were there, and they were able to talk to each other, which was so helpful.

[00:22:32] Annie: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. And so did the kids do any of this, or was it just the adults doing this?

[00:22:39] Emily: The kids joined in their hot air ballooning. They didn’t join in the parapenting, they were fine without that, but they instead, his son’s quite into mountain biking. So he had an electric mountain bike and he went around because there’s so many great tracks in Chamonix to do that.

[00:22:55] Annie: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And in, so in Chamonix, you had to get up to the Aiguille du Midi to, to do the paragliding.

[00:23:02] Emily: Opposite side. The hill on the other side, yeah.

So, there are a number of launch sites and you can look them up beforehand. There’s, I think most people who do flying would be familiar with different apps and websites. And so what we found, there was some in Annecy, so we’d stopped in at like Annecy the day before and had a look at a few of those launch sites. And they would have been beautiful, too.

And there was a shop front down the bottom of the hill and pilots there that could give advice and say about the wind and what they recommended. And then when we went to Chamonix, there were number of launch sites there. And they’d just check the wind and the direction, and again, there were other pilots you could ask advice from, and they’d make recommendations about which launch site to use.

[00:23:46] Annie: Mm hmm, mm hmm. And obviously, I mean, this bears repeating, you wouldn’t have been able to do all of that without a car, because you do need to get to these remote places.

[00:23:56] Emily: Yes.

[00:23:57] Annie: I mean, there are roads, but no trains. Ha ha ha.

[00:24:00] Emily: Yes, that’s true. That’s definitely what we found, like to get to some of these places, you would have needed a lot more time if you were going to try and go by public transport, or you would have needed to organize it through a shop front that could transport you there. So, I’m sure it’s still possible, but because we had less time it definitely made it easier.

[00:24:19] Annie: It’s much faster. Yes. If you can make your own way there, it’s much faster. Definitely. It sounds like you liked Chamonix a lot. The French Alps, you liked a lot.

[00:24:29] Emily: Yes, we loved it. And we enjoyed doing some hiking there, that was beautiful as well. And we were just so lucky because the days that we were there, we actually experience the Olympic torch relay.

[00:24:41] Annie: Ah!

[00:24:42] Emily: I had really been hoping that we would cross paths with it and hadn’t seen it on the map specifically called Chamonix, so I thought that we were sort of going in the opposite direction from it, but we were fortunate to see that it was happening there and it was so neat.

They’d put in this effort to make a sort of mini Olympics on a sports field there. And so you could go and try all these different activities that were part of the Olympics, mostly winter olympics activities, but we were able to try those ones. And you could, more for the children, but they could get a booklet and get little stamps if they tried all the activities, then they could get a T-shirt. So that was really neat.

[00:25:19] Annie: Yeah. Yeah. And they often do this at Olympic sites. They will have like little booths that you can go to and try doing whatever, you know, shooting, hopping, I don’t know, all things that athletes do that you can try your hand at. And usually, again, there are people there supervising this whole thing, and making sure people take turns, and all of that.

And yeah, it’s always fun to see those at Olympic sites. And I’m about to go to the Paralympics, I hope they do things of that sort, but like maybe, putyou know, blindfolds on us, or things like that, to see what is like, you know, to do all these amazing sports without the benefit of whatever it is that they don’t have.

So yeah, it would be, it would be fun to do.

[00:26:08] Emily: That’s a great idea actually. There’s even something we should do with our kids here, yeah.

Dune du Pilat Impressions

[00:26:12] Annie: Yeah. So we had left La Dune du Pilat. You didn’t say very much about it. How did you like it? What was it? Tell us what it was like for you, besides the bathroom.

[00:26:24] Emily: No, it was fantastic. The view was incredible. I think if we went back again, this was a whirlwind trip because obviously we had our time limits and we knew where we wanted to get to at certain times. So while it didn’t feel too rushed, there’s places we would have spent more time at and this would have been one of them.

So. I think, we realized that there was actually accommodation at Dune du Pilat, and it was actually quite good accommodation. So when I’d looked on the website previously, it was hard to tell, like, how established it was, or if you were going to be camping in a tent, or what it would look like.

But they looked like they were lovely cabins that you could stay with great common areas and common facilities that next time we would probably stay there. But we also loved Arcachon.

Exploring Arcachon: A Relaxing Beach Town

[00:27:09] Emily: It was a cute little beach town, and we really enjoyed the food. It had some nice boutiquey shops, it was beautiful along the waterfront, and we would have spent more time there, I think, if we went again.

[00:27:23] Annie: Yeah, Arcachon is a lovely town. I mean, it’s a bit of aquiet town, I guess. I mean, a lot more people in their fifties. It’s not a youthful, happening, hopping town, but it’s a place where you can enjoy some very nice leisurely time at the beach, or going on boat rides, or renting a boat or, you know, doing things along, you know, around the water.

And I think it’s pretty and pleasant, most of the time. The weather is nice there most of the time. So yeah, it’s a good place.

[00:28:00] Emily: No, we got that impression too. We liked it. And like you said, it seemed relaxed, leisurely. Like, I think we would taken slow, slow days there. So, that was nice.

(Mid-roll ad spot)

Experiencing Lyon’s Fête de la Musique

[00:28:10] Emily: After Dune du Pilat and that visit as well, we drove to Lyon. And that was something that we really were looking forward to because I’d heard of this fête de la musique.

[00:28:24] Annie: Ah, fête de la musique! Yes, yes.

[00:28:27] Emily: The concept of it seemed so amazing to me, the fact that everyone just gets on the street and plays music. And when we thought oh, we need to be in a bigger town to experience this because we want to see what’s possible. And during the day, you know, it was hard to tell.

We couldn’t, we didn’t know it was just going something quite small, and had I got it a bit wrong? But no, come the evening, and we had this beautiful apartment in the apartment block, so we’d had to carry all our suitcases up these stairs, because it was in the old town, they didn’t have a lift or anything. Which was totally fine, but it was something else just to note that if you’re staying in some of these apartment places, they may not have lifts. So you may do have to be prepared to carry your things up the stairs.

And we got up to this apartment, we had a great view over the river, and along the streets of the old town. And come the evening, we went down and started walking around, and there was just, there were bands on every corner, in every pub or restaurant there was a different sort of music. There was a street band, like a brass band, or a rock band playing covers or… When we crossed the road across the river, we got into more the techno music and different sorts of, you know, just everywhere there was something different and it was really fun.

[00:29:41] Annie: Right. So when you are in France for the Fête de la Musique, it is a very good point that you bring up that you really should be in a larger city. I mean, tiny little places will also have something sometimes, but it’s a better bet to go to the largest city in the area. And it does not start until evening.

So, if you think, oh, all day, there’s going to be music. That’s not how it works. They set up during the day, and then in the evening, the bands start playing. They start playing maybe at 9pm, because it is summer, so they will start late, and will go into the night, a lot of them.

So you just have to plan on staying up late that night if you want to enjoy it.

[00:30:24] Emily: Yeah. And we were really impressed actually because, there was no rowdiness really. So there were hundreds of people on the street, and it was really good fun. And, you know, obviously people enjoying themselves, few people having drinks, everyone was singing and getting into it, but we didn’t come across anything that made us feel unsafe or unsavory or that, you know, any trouble of any sort.

So we were actually really impressed because we felt if that had been over here, we probably would have encountered a lot more unruly people.

[00:30:55] Annie: Perhaps a few too many beers.

[00:30:57] Emily: Yeah, perhaps maybe that’s we wouldn’t expecting more of, but one thing that did surprise us, I don’t know what you call your, it wasn’t the local police, but it started with G like Grenaderie or something,

[00:31:10] Annie: Gendarmerie. The gendarmes. Yeah.

[00:31:14] Emily: So they were out in force earlier when some of the more popular bands were coming in, sitting up for their concerts, and they had quite heavy, or semi-automatic, was sort of machine guns, that’s not something that we see over here. So that felt like, wow, this is serious, like, what are we expecting tonight?

Is it going to get very rowdy? And no, we were wrong, it wasn’t really rowdy, but yeah, it was unusual for us to see that.

[00:31:40] Annie: So yes, in France, the gendarmes tend to be heavily armed. They have things. They don’t use them typically, so thankfully they don’t need to use them. But, you know, we have had some terrible things happen at big events, public events. Like in Nice a few years back, they had this truck that just drove into the population and killed lots of people.

And so now they usually set up like big blocks of cement. They block off parts of the city so that no vehicles can enter. So that it’s, you know, a safe kind of safer environment. And they have a lot of police ready to intervene if necessary. So, yeah, they will have machine guns, a lot of them.

[00:32:26] Emily: Yeah, well, we definitely felt safe. So they did their job. I guess we could say it that way.

[00:32:32] Annie: Yeah.

Well, and it’s important to note that in France, the exception being Les Fêtes de Bayonne, most of these kind of holidays do not degenerate into, you know, horrible drunk fest. Les Fêtes de Bayonne are an exception, every year people get roaring drunk and have, I would never go, like, this is not for me, it’s too… it’s too rowdy. But most other places it’s fine, it’s happy-go-lucky, you know, people have a few drinks, but it’s not, like, they don’t get aggressive or whatever.

[00:33:08] Emily: No, no, it was great. It was great. And all the restaurants were open. I mean, in general, I think we’ve experienced that everything starts later in France. So dinner, and just even during the normal week, everything’s open a lot later than, and people eat dinner a lot later than what we would expect to in Australia.

But that was nice. It was perfect in the summer with the long evenings. It worked well for our holiday.

[00:33:33] Annie: This has to do with how late, when the sun comes, is down, like people like to stay up until sundown and an hour or two later. And so when the sun doesn’t come down till 9pm, then, you know, that’s when things start really. Which may feel a little late to a lot of visitors. Yeah, I hear ya.

Tour de France: A Hill Climb Adventure

[00:33:55] Annie: So looking at the list of things that you’ve enjoyed, I asked you to rank them, and the very first one you said is watching Tour de France on a hill climb.

Hill climb. Tell me about that a little more, please. Yeah, for sure.

[00:34:12] Emily: So, we were really excited to watch Tour de France because we’ve seen it on TV so many times and I quite enjoy cycling. So, yeah, we’ve watched it and we thought, we weren’t sure what to expect because sometimes on TV you see great crowds of people. And I didn’t know if we went along, if we would find it hard to find a spot, or find somewhere to stay, or anything else.

So we looked at the map before we came over and found somewhere that was part way along. And I thought, behind a hill were if they were climbing up the hill that maybe they’d be going ever so slightly slower. They were still going very quickly, but it was so slightly slower, so we might be a bit more of them and they might be a bit more spread out if it was further in the race so we could see a bit more of them.

So I made a big sign and it said Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, the flag. And we went a part way up this hill in this really small town Rustignano in Italy, to watch the tour. And while we were waiting the caravan, they call it, comes through first, so that’s sponsors, and they throw out all this memorabilia first, which was a great experience too.

And then just by chance, one of the team cars pulled up next to us, and it was the Jayco team, so that was Team Australia. So we pulled out the flag and showed them, and the team manager, or one of the team managers came out and he sat with us for a whole hour waiting to do the last bottle change for the riders.

That was just such a cool coincidence and great experience for us. When the peloton came past, or firstly the lead riders came past, we held up the sign and cheered for them, and then when the peloton did, we did the same, and they threw their drink bottles, or a few of them threw their drink bottles to us, so that was really cool, we could catch those.

[00:35:58] Annie: Yes. Yes. I mean, they change bottles. They just throw them out and then grab a new one. Yeah.

[00:36:04] Emily: Well, we found as well that by having the sign I think they almost threw it to us and targeted because lots of people like to collect them, I think. So, that was really neat. Because we’d seen the Grand Depart the day before in Florence, so we’d gone along there. But obviously, that was a bit more what I was expecting with just crowds of people, and I wasn’t tall enough to see over most of them. So, I was standing in the background and my partner could hold up his video and I watched it later, but I couldn’t… couldn’t see the riders so well, but it was a great atmosphere.

[00:36:35] Annie: Yeah. Yeah. If you like riding and you’re in France during the tour, yeah, you got to go. And you’re right, if you go on one of the hill things and you walk, because obviously, I mean, I assume it’s the same in Italy, but they don’t let you drive your car up the hill, you have to park somewhere and then you walk, or ride your bike, if you have a bike.

And you have to get there early, so that they let you through, otherwise, once the peloton gets close… lockdown… nobody goes.

[00:37:03] Emily: Yeah, that’s right. And we were lucky with our accommodation because we chose somewhere that was en route. So we could really just walk out of the apartment, and walk a couple of hundred meters, and we were at this hill, so it was lucky.

[00:37:15] Annie: Well, you planned it right.

[00:37:17] Emily: Yeah. We planned it.

[00:37:19] Annie: It’s lucky planning.

[00:37:21] Emily: Yes.

[00:37:22] Annie: Okay.

Mont Blanc Cable Car and parapenting

[00:37:24] Annie: So the second one, you said parapenting, which we already talked about. The Olympic torch relay. Oh, you took the cable car to Mont Blanc, how was that?

[00:37:34] Emily: Yeah, we loved it. It was funny because we woke up in the morning and it was the clearest sky and we said, yes, we’ll go and do this cable car. And once we’d done our flight earlier in the morning, because we actually went parapenting in the morning. So when we came down, then we went to book the tickets and then, because I think it must book out quite quickly, we had to wait a couple of hours before we could actually go up the hill.

And by the time our turn came around, the cloud had started to come around. But that was okay, I think it’s something I put in my notes as a bit of a lesson to learn. I think that if you were really heart set on seeing these amazing panoramic views and going to the panoramic cafe, then you probably would want to be there for a few days to make sure you hopefully got this window of weather and that you’d want to go very early in the morning to book your ticket. Because as the day progresses often the cloud rolls in and that was our experience. But we had enough gaps in the cloud to be able to see still some great views of the snow, and some peaks. We just couldn’t see from the top of the hill down to the bottom, but during the cable car ride we could and that was beautiful. I think we learned a few things, on that as well, like the cable car, it was fairly packed in, so I would say I guess if you feel more claustrophobic or, you know, it’s just something to get your head around before you go on the cable car, that you are standing for a while and packed in with people, but when you’re up there it’s a great experience.

You also have to wait to come down, so I guess whoever goes up, you come back down in a certain order. So it’s not like you go up and just choose when you come down. So you need to be prepared that you’ll be up there for a few hours. And I felt fine and my partner did too, but his daughter, and not just her alone, a lot of, we saw a few other people actually with the medics started to feel the altitude a bit, which made them feel a bit unwell after some time.

So that was something else just to be aware of, but I still recommend it. Definitely. It’s an incredible view.

[00:39:34] Annie: Yeah, you’re going up very quickly, very fast, it can be a problem for some people, older people, especially, typically, you know, your heart has to keep up with the altitude. And so, yeah, it’s… yeah, something to consider.

[00:39:50] Emily: Yeah. And I mean, and it’s also cold up there as you would expect, I hope, because you can see the snow right around you and it is a bit icier up there. So you sort of go prepared with your layers to put on some warmer clothes. They have a restaurant up there. It was, yeah, and they have different information areas you can go and learn about the history of the cable car and different things about the area. And watch some cool videos of people mountaineering, and that sort of thing. You just be prepared to take it slowly and don’t be in a rush to come back down.

[00:40:22] Annie: Yeah. Another. So I’m skipping a lot of things on your list because you’ve mentioned many of them.

Beach Days and Running Adventures

[00:40:27] Annie: We haven’t gotten to Eden Plage, Plage Mala, or Cap d’Ai. Tell me about that.

[00:40:33] Emily: That was lovely. That was amazing. So that was one of the things that was on my partner’s daughter’s list. She said, I would love to spend some time on a European beach. And funnily enough, the time that we were on the coast, it was a bit overcast mostly. So I wasn’t able to give that really European summer vibe.

We were probably a little bit early for the crowds, but that was fantastic, because it meant that… we looked up a few different places in the area. So we were staying in Menton at that time. And this was, again, an advantage of having a car, we were able to drive to this Eden Plage, this beach, and I looked up reviews for different beaches to see where might be a good place to stay.

So we decided to go and have lunch at this beach and booked a table, because it seemed to go to the private beaches. You either need to book a table or you need to book the chairs to lie down. Some of them are a bit more expensive, but we decided this was an experience we wanted to enjoy, and they served us fantastic food.

It was amazing. And after our lunch, I think what we learned is we probably could have just left our stuff there and gone down and swum at the beach, but we moved down to the chairs and were able to lie on the chairs for a few hours and swim out in this beautiful, clear, slightly cold water and enjoyed it.

[00:41:51] Annie: Yes. Yes. The Med is not very warm. On the French coast it’s not warm, you have to, if you want warm you have to go south to Barcelona.

[00:41:59] Emily: But it’s still beautiful and it was refreshing. It was nice. And I swam out. And that was, it was another interesting thing because in Australia, because we have some quite rough surf beaches, we get very used to, if you go to a swimming pool or if you go to the beach, there’s normally active lifeguards who are all dressed the part and very much watching your swimmers. Whereas they did have a lifeguard board here, but you could swim out at the beach and it really didn’t feel like anyone was on, you know, on immediate guard. You’d have to really give them some time to alert them that you were in trouble for them to do anything.

[00:42:36] Annie: Yes, yes.

[00:42:39] Emily: But it was dead flat and beautiful.

So, I think most of the time that wouldn’t be a problem.

[00:42:44] Annie: Yeah, I keep wondering, so when I go to the beach in the summer, I like to swim, and I like to swim like, you know, they have buoys for the… they like mark a channel for the boats. And I like to walk, I like to swim along those buoys. That way it gives me a goal, you know, and I always wonder, are they going to yell at me for… because I’m not going into the channel, but I’m very close to it.

And they never care, like, so long as you’re not of it frolicking, you know, they don’t care. They let you do your own thing, which is really good, I think. Because it would, I mean, I would stop doing it if they yell at me, because I’m kind of scaredy cat, like I mentioned a few times already.

But I do like to do a few things, and that’s one of them is to swim around the, you know, the beaches.

Running from Monaco to Menton

[00:43:33] Annie: At any rate, you mentioned running from Monaco to Menton. Who’s the runner? Are you the runner?

[00:43:40] Emily: Yes. I enjoyed that. So, on the way back from the beach, after our big lunch, I decided to run it off. No, I thought it was so cool that we could drive through Monaco and Menton and it was an amazing hilly area. And I thought, you know what, do you think I could actually run back from Monaco? Because how cool would it be to run between two countries?

I mean, you don’t get to do that in Australia or New Zealand, that’s not possible. Maybe this something that I could try. So yeah, we stopped in Monaco on the way back and had a look at all the yachts and the amazing sites to be seen there. And after that I just, yeah, put my runs on and followed through.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to be stopped on a border or something, but no, I could just follow the path and ran straight down into Menton. So that was, it was a cool experience.

[00:44:29] Annie: How long of a run was this?

[00:44:31] Emily: It was only about eight kilometers, so it wasn’t a long run.

[00:44:36] Annie: And mostly downhill?

[00:44:38] Emily: Oh, you had to go up to come down, so there was a bit both, but it was good.

[00:44:43] Annie: Yeah.

[00:44:45] Emily: I mean, you can take it at your own speed, so it’s just cool to know you could, you know, there were fairly well marked posts and pathways to walk between the two, which was neat.

[00:44:54] Annie: Right, so you could have run through three countries there because once you’re in Menton, Italy’s not very far.

French vs Italian road signs

[00:45:00] Emily: I know, I thought it was super cute, I was thinking that, but we would have had to run through tunnels, I think, there’s so many tunnels in that stretch of the coast.

And that probably brings us to another experience that we had, is that we just noticed that French roads and signage and everything else seemed to be to a different standard, perhaps, than the Italian roads, mostly.

[00:45:25] Annie: Ok, explain a little more.

[00:45:27] Emily: Well, it was so interesting that, for example, when we were driving through the tunnel between Chamonix and Aosta, we got to where it must have been the border between Italy and France, and the lights on the sides of the tunnel stopped, and the road markings stopped, and everything just changed from what we’d just experienced in France to when we went into Italy, and the road signs changed. And I’ve found I’d been navigating mostly because not only were we driving on the opposite side of the road, it was also a manual car we had hired.

So it was just a lot of different things and Ryan seemed comfortable and happy driving. So I was very happy navigating. And in France, we found it so easy that, we did take toll roads, so we did mostly take the highways where we could drive fast, it was great, they were well kept, well maintained, well signposted.

I don’t think we were lost or missed a turn off really at all in France, and that was easy. Then we got to Italy, and I probably felt slightly stressed or anxious after taking a few wrong turns because we found the signs, it was just signed differently from what we found in France. And that I was finding that what it was showing me on Apple or Google Maps was a bit different from what I was seeing on the signs in terms of road numbers and the exits were, like, all of the lettering was smaller and less warning.

We just found that a bit harder. And, with the signposts in France, where it would say, you know, you have the two different speeds, like a hundred and thirty kilometers per hour if it’s sunny, and a hundred and ten if it’s raining. That was on one sign, and it was quite clear what each was for, not that we were particularly clear on how to determine what was classified as raining and when we should slow if it was like a slightly wet road.

But when we were in Italy, they would have four signs perhaps in a row and probably because we didn’t understand Italian either, but there were a few words maybe under each sign, and we didn’t know how to interpret this as to which speed we were meant to be doing. And on hindsight I think some was probably wet weather, some was dry weather, some was for trucks, and some was for foggy weather.

That wasn’t clear in where we were driving. It was just a lot of information.

[00:47:43] Annie: Yeah, and it’s good to hear it. I mean, French roads in general are good, they’re not free for the, I mean, the freeways are not free. Autoroutes, you have to pay for. But if you listen to the podcast, obviously, you know that you’re going to have to pay for those. And that’s just something you budget.

[00:47:59] Emily: That was something I’ve really appreciated having listened to your podcast for because it would have taken us by quite surprise if we turned up and not done that. And there’s something that we’ve found that was a significant budget to say the amount of tolls because we drove about three and a half thousand k’s and so…

[00:48:20] Annie: That’s a lot!

[00:48:21] Emily: Yeah, and we probably spent five or six hundred euros at least on tolls driving across that distance So it’s just something else to make sure we budgeted for.

Yeah. Yes. And there are some freeways in France that are free, but when they are free, they’re not as well endowed. Between Brive and Paris, I’m about to drive to Paris between Toulouse and Paris, and between Brive and Paris, it’s mostly free, you don’t have to pay any tolls, but you have much fewer gas stations, much fewer services along the way.

So, you know, you’re kind of on your own. Sometimes you have to exit the freeway to find services. Whereas when you’re on a toll road, you have services every few kilometers. I mean, it’s really easy. You don’t have to plan anything. Even for electric cars, you don’t have to plan anything because they have chargers everywhere.

Yes, that’s what we found. We didn’t have to worry about anything like fuel running out or things like that, because they were well spaced, well signposted. It did take us a while to work out how to pay for fuel at the pin pad before we filled up the car. So we had to try and follow those instructions with a timing of inserting and pulling out the pay card.

And then when you had to lift the nozzle off the holder and then put it in the car.

[00:49:43] Annie: And the first time we did this, we were at a service station near Le Mans, and the 24 hours of Le Mans race had just finished. So there was so many nice cars, which was really cool. We’re watching all these cars, but it meant that there was a lineup of cars behind us.

[00:49:57] Emily: And here we are mucking up, filling up our car and making everybody wait even longer, so it felt a bit badly.

[00:50:04] Annie: Yeah. Yeah, in France, you have to put your card in because it’s going to read the chip. If you’re, I mean, French cards have a chip, right? And so it’s going to read the chip. And I’m sometimes surprised that when I go to America, it doesn’t, there’s no chip to read. So they want you to swipe quickly. So put the card in and out fast. Whereas in France, typically you have to leave it in a bit longer. So yeah, read the signs, it’s going to tell you what to do, just read it.

[00:50:31] Emily: Yes, yeah, because in Australia, mostly, you would just fill your car up and then walk into the service station and pay for it later.

[00:50:37] Annie: I see.

[00:50:38] Emily: It was completely different to what we’re used to.

Anything Not Recommended?

[00:50:40] Annie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alright, so, anything that you did that you would not recommend, that wasn’t any, that, meh, wasn’t great?

[00:50:49] Emily: I don’t think we had any real, like… ugh, we wouldn’t do that again. I mean, I think we probably all agreed that we were had seen plenty of the car by the time we finished driving that distance. And obviously cars were just slightly smaller and my partner and his kids are quite tall. So fitting us into the car for that period of time, we probably had, we’d had enough by the end of it. And perhaps we would mix up, like saying, drive to the parts that we really wanted to see, and then use some public transport, or use some trains to see some other things.

So just to mix it up. So that probably a lesson for us. But we did try and break it up to make sure we had at least two nights at most places.

[00:51:32] Annie: But you kept moving a lot. I mean, you covered a lot of ground, really.

[00:51:37] Emily: Yes, yes, we really, we really did. I was looking at my other notes that I’d made, I’ve told you about my mistake of ordering too many coffees, so I would learn how to order coffee better. And we’ve spoken about the public toilets. Something else that surprised us or made us laugh a bit was when we got to our accommodation on a few occasions, we went to use the towel, and instead of having a big bath towel to dry off, dry ourselves off, we had quite a small, like, what we would consider a hand towel, but that was what we were given as our towel for drying off.

So I wasn’t sure if that was something usual in France or…?

[00:52:13] Annie: The more you pay for the hotel, the bigger the towels.

[00:52:16] Emily: Yeah, we mustn’t have paid too much for some of these hotels, so…

[00:52:22] Annie: You have to go to three or four star hotel to get decent towels, really. Otherwise it’s going to be ugh! But I mean you could easily just bring one of these, you know, the fast drying towels that people use for sports. You could bring one of those and then you’re fine, you know, they not very heavy or big or bulky or, you know.

[00:52:40] Emily: Yeah, for sure. And I think, I mean, we didn’t have this problem specifically, but the amount of gluten that we probably ate, like dairy and gluten, that we ate being overseas because we loved the look of all the food, we probably ate a heap more of it than usual, so we all ended up feeling like we were really bloated.

So I think, probably, if you really did have a gluten intolerance or something like that, it would be something to be aware of, because again, I didn’t see a lot of gluten free options. I mean, I wasn’t specifically looking for them ourselves, but I thought that something that in Australia it’s quite common to have a lot of different dietary requirements catered for, and I think we found it more traditional in France where we’d just see delicious pastries and we wanted to eat those.

[00:53:27] Annie: Yes, yes, we do like our pastries.

All right Emily we’ve been talking a long time, I just noticed time, oh, this is a long one, but I’ve enjoyed talking to you. Thank you so much. I love that you took a long trip like this with your family and that you were able to see a lot of France.

That was very ambitious.

[00:53:45] Emily: No, we loved it, thank you. And thank you as well for all the service and the wonderful hospitality we had. We really did find that French people were so hospitable and we really enjoyed it.

[00:53:54] Annie: Thank you very much, Emily, and wishing you more good times in France soon, hopefully.

[00:54:00] Emily: Thanks, Annie.

Thank you Patrons

[00:54:08] Annie: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patreon supporters get new episodes as soon as they are ready and ad-free. You can be like them, follow the link in the show notes.

Patrons get more exclusive rewards for doing that, you can see all of that at patreon.com/JoinUs. And a special shout out this week to our new Join Us in France champions, Heidi Martelok, a former bootcamper, Laurie Martinson, and Margaret, who didn’t share her last name.

Thank you all of you, and to all of my current patrons, it is wonderful to have you on board in the community of travel enthusiasts, and Francophiles who keep this podcast going.

Support Elyse

[00:54:56] Annie: And to support Elyse, go to Patreon.com/ElysArt.

VoiceMap Tours Reviews

[00:55:01] Annie: I’d like to share some reviews of my VoiceMap tours about Le Marais.

Somebody wrote: ‘Another wonderful tour from Annie. I particularly enjoyed discovering the library at the, Hotel Lamoignon. Thank you.’ Yes, that’s a fun little corner of the Marais that most people miss.

About my Latin Quarter tour, somebody wrote: ‘A great introduction to the Latin Quarter with enjoyable and insightful commentary. Directions were easy to follow and the walk was mostly flat with occasional slight incline and decline’.

About the Montmartre tour: ‘A lovely way to spend the morning with Annie in my ear, so I could look around and enjoy the place instead of looking at my phone. Merci beaucoup!’ Merci to you.

Thank you very much for all of those reviews and podcast listeners get a big discount for buying these tours from my website.

But if you buy directly from me, it’s a manual process, so don’t panic if you don’t get the codes immediately, I do sleep. So if you are in a hurry, best buy the codes from the VoiceMap app directly. And if you want to read more reviews on these tours, go to joinusinfrance.com/VMR. That stands for VoiceMap Reviews.

Itinerary Consultations for 2025

[00:56:19] Annie: If you’re thinking about a trip to France next year and have a hard time deciding what to do, I can help you with my one on one consultations on Zoom. I offer two levels of Itinerary Consultations, the Bonjour service and the VIP service. And you get more help with the VIP of course, but Bonjour is often enough to clear up any questions that you have.

You can see all the details and book it at joinusinfrance.com/boutique. Also, remember that I am an Amazon affiliate, so if you’d like to support the podcast while shopping for Christmas, type JoinUsInFrance.com/Amazon into your web browser.

You’ll see some of my favorite travel products in Amazon, but even if you don’t need any of those, just because you started your shopping from that page, every purchase you make through this link makes me eligible for a small commission. And get this, it does not cost you a penny more. We all pay the Amazon Advertising Commission every time we shop there. This is your chance to assign that commission to me instead of having it back into Amazon’s very deep pocket. Sometimes it’s enough to pay for the streaming costs associated with the podcast, which is very nice. So thank you for your support.

Again, it’s joinusinfrance.com/Amazon to get started on that.

Igor, the Retired Guide Dog

[00:57:39] Annie: Let’s talk about Igor, the retired guide dog. So I was able to adopt him last Monday. That day, he and his human, Nicolas, made their way from their suburban home near Montpellier to the Toulouse guide dog school, on the train.

Igor wore the harness and guided and did his work impeccably, as always.

But once he got to the Guide Dog School in Toulouse, they took off the harness for the very last time. He didn’t know this, of course, but it was the last time he would wear it. I met him there. He fussed over me, and I fussed over him.

I chatted with Nicolas, and the Guide Dog School staff. Then we had some paperwork to sign for me to officially adopt him. Guide dogs, at least in France, but I think it’s a pretty normal thing, they belong to the Guide Dog school that trained them until they retire.

If the person they are guiding stops working the dog properly, the dog can be removed and placed somewhere else. This, of course, does not happen very much at all. When it does, it’s usually because of very difficult circumstances for everybody involved. The only guide dog I know of that was removed, was because his owner fell into a deep depression and was unable to take care of himself, let alone the dog.

So, the dog came back to the family that raised him for a few weeks, while the owner got better and then he went back to work. So it ended well.

Igor was always treated well, worked great. He didn’t run into any problems like that. He was very attached to his human, keeping an eye on him at all times. His person, Nicolas, is completely blind and mostly deaf.

Despite that, he got a great education and works as a lawyer. So he’s somebody that I look up to in many ways. But you know, if you close your eyes and plug your ears, let’s see what difficulties you run into. I know I would have a very hard time managing. Igor was his eyes and sometimes his ears as well, which makes it much, much more difficult.

Nicholas is getting a new guide dog, a young dog from the Toulouse school, and he didn’t want Igor to meet the new dog and understand what was happening because he knows this is a difficult time for the dog and, you know, I understand that.

So, as soon as the paperwork was signed, I left with Igor, who has known me since he was a puppy and is just coming home, as it were. He doesn’t fit in the car as well as he used to when he was a puppy, he’s a big guy, but he looked at me with his gorgeous light brown eyes and I reassured him everything is going to be okay.

Meeting my dog, Opie, at home was easy. They are both sweet dogs that don’t have an aggressive bone in their bodies. I fed him a big meal, we went on the same walk we took when he was little, and he sniffed all the smells, he got to run around free. I gave him a shower then, because he was a bit… not to my standard, let’s put it that way. And then I showed him to his new orthopedic bed.

This is a big change for Igor, he’s used to be needed all day, even indoors, he’s used to showing his owner to an empty seat, or let him know where the banister is, or where the elevator button is.

I don’t need him for any of that, and yet, anytime I get up from my office chair he gets up at the ready. But he’s 11 years old and sometimes getting up is difficult. I wish he’d keep snoozing like my other dog, Opie, who ignores me all day long until I’m ready to go on a walk.

But, you know, he’s not there yet. He’ll get there. I think it might take him a week or two to just stop watching, minding me so much.

This morning we’re going to the veterinarian where he’ll get a full workup and he’ll probably get some medication for his arthritis. You know, I cannot tell you how happy I am to have Igor with us. He’s a dear old boy and I’ll spoil him rotten. But no food until the blood test this morning, Igor! I had to explain that to him at least a dozen times today already.

Notre Dame

[01:01:46] Annie: Let’s talk about the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris application. I’ll put an image of the app in the show notes for this episode, but it’s called, they named it in French because there’s a bazillion apps for the cathedral, but it’s the one you want is dark blue and white, and it says Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris. I installed it. It seems to work well. I couldn’t find any tickets for the next few days. It does not show you tickets very much into the future, but you should install the app. It works either on Android or iPhone. You should install the app and you should start looking for tickets a couple of weeks before your trip.

And hopefully, it’ll get easier to get tickets. At this time, it’s only dignitaries, and famous people, and donors, and people who work there and et cetera. This week they had a special Mass where all the people who worked at the cathedral sang the Fauré classic, Le Cantique de Jean Racine, a beautiful, beautiful short piece.

It’s very beautiful. It is challenging to sing, but most amateur choirs give it a try because it’s short. And so these are people who are, you know, they were a worker at the cathedrals, they are manual people, but they wanted to try and sing this beautiful piece to say goodbye to their cathedral.

So it’s… it’s a very touching moment for us in France, and I hope you get to watch some of that on TV like I am.

French Politics

[01:03:15] Annie: Briefly, French politics. I won’t say much about this because it’s developing, but the Prime Minister did not have the confidence of the Parliament, so he has to ‘donner sa démission’.

So he does not have the confidence of the parliament, so he has to step down. And for a while, it’s going to be very difficult to find a new prime minister, because this is a nest of people who do not want to work together. That’s just as simple as that. They are all in it for themselves and they don’t care. Honestly, I find them pigheaded and not very gratifying to follow on social media or on the news, or whatever.

So I’m avoiding as much of that as possible. You know, politics can work really, really well when people cooperate and work together. And when they are just in it for themselves, don’t want solutions, don’t even look for solutions, really, they just grandstand is all they do, then it’s really sorry.

We may be stuck in this vortex for a few weeks, perhaps months. In the meantime, civil servants will continue to be paid, pensions will continue to be paid, planned rate increases will take place. The taxes were planned to get an automatic increase and parliament was saying, Oh, we’ll stop that.

Well, they don’t have a government, so it’s not going to… they won’t stop it.

In France, we have no government shut down. So the government will continue to run itself for a while. That’s just how it works. So, wait and see.

Many thanks to podcast editors, Anne and Cristian Cotovan.

Next week on the Podcast

[01:04:53] Annie: And next week on the podcast, an episode with Elyse about the life of the wonderful Marie Antoinette, France’s most controversial queen.

From lavish Versailles to her tragic downfall during the Revolution, of course, this episode goes into her legacy, myths, and the real woman behind the iconic figure. I think you’ll love it.

And remember, if you are sick of the ads, and why wouldn’t you be, click on the link in the show notes of this episode to join me on Patreon. You can get rid of the ads for a very little amount of money, a very small amount of money, perhaps it’s worth it to you.

Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together. Au revoir!

Copyright

[01:05:41] Annie Sargent: The Join Us in France travel podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and Copyright 2024 by AddictedToFrance. It is released under a Creative Commons, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.

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Transcript for Episode 523: Adventures in France: A Road Trip with Older Teens