France is a nightmare

[Provenceinthesummer]

And you think it is bad in the U.K. come to France and see what a country on it’s knees really looks like.

We arrived hoping for a relaxing road trip and holiday. Every service station is littered with rubbish, most of them they have run out of food, loo paper and filthy tables and chairs so there is nowhere to even sit.

We finally arrive at a five star hotel to find out the restaurant is closed every day for three days - apparently the French F&B crisis is worse than ours! No chef, no waiting staff. They couldn’t even provide a basic room service menu. Every restaurant in the area also closes on the same days which was helpful.

Fawlty towers ensues as we try to meet basic needs of water and resort to the mini bar nuts for dinner. The gardens and pool are a mass of wasps and flies and the baking heat makes it an unbearable experience. I have never been to a hotel with no food anywhere in the world !!

Parched, starving and exhausted we check out the following day and find a hotel with food - all good apart from the fact there is no air conditioning and it’s 36c minimum here. It’s also rated five star apparently. Sleepless, exhausted and dizzy from the heat we drive in the car to ‘cool down’ and after a few miserable sweltering nights we decide to check out to next hotel - which promises great things like air conditioning and actual food only to find out the housekeepers are now non existent, all have covid. The number of people coughing and ill around the pool and in the hotel is alarming. The food is so bad it’s made me sick every night, kids are now refusing to eat anything else apart from crisps!

I haven’t slept for over a week - now facing a 12 hour grumpy drive home, I developed a severe sore throat and shakes overnight and it’s 39c! We have paid a fortune for this ‘ holiday’ and I can not wait to get home!! 🤨

We’re currently on a three week holiday in France and have done a fair bit of travelling around.

Other than the temperature, I can honestly say I don’t recognise anything at all in your post. We’ve even commented several times about how clean everything is and how friendly and attentive everyone has been!

Maybe you’ve just been unlucky?

It was 40 here yesterday in the Dordogne.
It's going to be 42 on Monday and Tuesday.
Even the pool is like a bath.
.Fortunately we live in an old stone house.
Our windows and shutters are closed at 10am.
The thick stone walls keep the heat out.
We walk the dog at 7am.

Both directions we got through the tunnel an hour ahead of our booked time!

People that eat in hotel restaurants are usually the same ones that have been driving for two days!

So sorry about your holiday OP, what horrible luck. Hope you feel better soon. xx

Severe sore throat and shakes sounds exactly like me this week and yes I have covid.
Sorry you have had a shit week away

Thanks to all the posters that instead of being supportive are piously telling me how wonderful it is! What a delight - dd now has woken up with covid. It’s not fun trust me in these temperatures and being so far from home.

Perhaps everyone is booking the same hotels.

Hope you get a better journey back.
I would buy a cold bag and pack a big bag of ice in with what food you want for the journey.

Thank you to those that are sending kind messages 🥰

You've clearly had a shit holiday and for that I sympathise but YABU to equate your own experience with the entire country being shit

We were in France recently (just before the heatwave thankfully) and didn't experience any of the problems you mention

The responses so far have been ridiculous but are you really going to ask for the thread to be pulled because you don't like the replies?

Sorry your dd has covid.

Please don’t be put off France though.
I think many people are going to have difficult holiday experiences this year with travel delays, covid, the heat and the Ukraine war.

I think you’d have had a better response to a thread titled “Holiday is a nightmare” rather than extrapolating from your nightmare that the whole of France (quite a big place) is fucked.

To be fair the people here have been very kind and friendly to us, and not rude apart from one waiter that memorably screamed at the chef at full volume and walked out with all the diners watching on, he was the only one serving! So not ideal - but we had given up on salvaging the holiday by that point anyway. The U.K. weather looks very mild in comparison.

I don’t know why people are denying your experience. If that’s what it was like for you, that’s what it was like.

How are you going to manage to drive all the way back if you and your dc have covid?

France is not on its knees.

I live on the border between France and Switzerland.

One bad holiday doesn’t equal a country on its knees. Oh op…. look up projecting

France is not a nightmare. Yes it is hot. Yes a shortage of mustard. I can't find mustard seeds anywhere, so I'm going to buy some to grow and grow my own.

But I guess what the issue is the impact of covid on the hospitality trade. Which includes the service stations. My suggestion if you are coming here, is to try and find supermarkets close to the motorways and use those instead. And make sure you have plenty of water and snacks.

But you posted in the aibu thread; surely you expected some blowback to such a strong criticism of a country based on a few days experience.
Better to post in chat if you just want and mopped brow and a 'there, there how awful'

OP I'm sorry you've had a rubbish trip.

I think most people who travel will have had some bad experience at one time or another, we have. We booked a French campsite once that we should have checked out of immediately but the tent was too big and the children too small. So we spent 10 days driving long distances to better places.

I think chalk this up to experience. If it wasnt shit hotels, you might have had a flight delay or a holiday cancelled. Lots of people are having a rubbish summer.

Onwards and upwards. Book a lovely mini break for August just you and DH somewhere with fab food and ideally no children in the vicinity.

I have enjoyed French holidays for many years but every single year ( bar one or two) we’ve had some sort of trouble on way over or way back. Striking dock workers, euro tunnel workers, farmers burning hay bales in the road, yellow jacket drama, migrants running through traffic on way to Calais with knives. I will go back to France as I do love it as a country but will wait for a few years I think.

Do you have insurance so you can claim back? I would, how can anyone expect to end up in a hotel that has a restaurant and then has no food or staff and think that's ok? That's not ok, they should have given a discount for lacking in what they promised. If you weren't bothered about eating there, you'd have booked a premier Inn style place, not a 5 star hotel.

We had a break in Haute Provence recently and didn't encounter any of the problems that you did. I don't think the fact that a country is experiencing heat means it's on its knees.

We will come back to France but may avoid the summer in future. We chose it because the temperatures are usually much lower than Greece etc and we love the place, but it’s clearly struggling with covid, heat, supplies and filling vacancies. Same as everywhere it seems. DS complaining he feels sick.

We travelled two weeks ago to both Alsace and Burgundy region, via the tunnel. Got an early tunnel with no queues both ways. Hotels were no issue at all, and we found lovely restaurants to eat at every night, though we did find you have to book ahead if you want somewhere specific. Food was delicious. Staffing may have been an issue, but if it was they didn't let on.
It sounds like you've just had bad luck. And it's hot everywhere.

Agree about the service stations, really grubby. And our 5* hotel basically only had French fries on offer in their restaurant!

Other than that, we’ve just come back from a lovely holiday.