Travelling in France

We are now in Paris after the south, both west and east. Lots of walking, the Metro - and no car. In the Pays Basque we hired a car which I, Bronwen, was shocked to find had gears. I thought driving on the right (wrong) side of the road, finding our way and changing gears was too much of a challenge at least for the passenger. For our drive east I insisted on a car with automatic gears. It seems they are more expensive to hire and, in France, only for the disabled. We got a nice Renault but I think Jack was a bit mortified.

We discovered despite the many strikes how compliant the regional French are – they take their own rubbish to communal bins. So far no protests about paying their rates. Speaking of strikes, the day we were to drive across France there was an airline strike which affected our friend in the south who works in London and commutes. He had to be driven to Spain to get a flight.

We now have a lot of experience of the European trains. Currently the French (SNCF) and German (Deutsch Bahn) trains share the international routes and jointly staff the trains with the Germans and French working side by side. The French union won’t let the French conductors serve food to first class passengers so the German conductors happily do it. The Deutsche Bahn makes a profit of 85 million Euros a year and the SNCF (pronounced sniff or something close) loses 85 million (or something close). SCNF is bidding to buy Eurostar and it seems the two companies are moving towards being competitors which doesn’t bode well for the French unions. The new national pension rules are to be decided in parliament next week so there will be a strike that day – I think it is 23 September.

French joggers are out around 11.00 am which seemed an odd time to me until I realised they are preparing for lunch by knocking off a few kilojoules. We were in the Luxembourg Gardens and I was very impressed by the herbaceous borders which were glorious. All purples, pinks and reds with a touch of blue. Artichokes in flower and purple grasses giving height with lots of grey green leaves and every now and then a dash of lime green. The gardens around the Senate were a co-ordinated work of art and makes you wonder what they are doing at the Botanical Gardens.