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!! 🤨

Our flights were cancelled ! We didn’t choose to drive but moderated our trip so we could still go, and thought it might be ‘fun’ with an optimistic road trip idea. As the hotel was paid for in France and couldn’t be cancelled and we would have lost everything. We didn’t intend to drive! We don’t live anywhere near Folkestone.

I didn't see you mention that anywhere but I must have missed it.

But you chose to go and chose to drive through France in the middle of summer - you just have known it would be roasting hot and that COVID was everywhere?

Don't get me wrong, I do sympathise but a lot of it seems to be normal "travelling during COVID" stuff that's been in the news for months now.

I think you probably feel a lot worse as you're unwell and can't enjoy yourselves too.

Dismissed an entire country as awful based on experience marred by covid and the heatwave, claimed extensive travel experience but were apparently surprised by the motorway tolls and not checked out the facilities in the hotels. Of course people will disagree. Even you acknowledge that the staff who were there were kind and tried to be helpful.

We have all been there - awful holidays resulting from adverse weather, forgetting to check out the details in the rush to get away. Just put it down to experience and looking at the way the climate is going the north might be a better bet in July another year.

I hope the DC get home ok.

We camp a lot and self cater on holidays.
Hopefully the hypermarkets have food.

I love France. I love camping in France. Sorry you are having a rubbish time

I know you’re poorly and hot but your attitude does not help.

Try and make the most of it and find the positives and you’ll find changing your mindset will mean you and your DCs will have not such a crap time because of it.

We live in Scotland. I am not looking forward to the U.K. leg either tbh. Dh just txt to say ds Is vomIting now. Those suggesting finding a travel lodge or other hotels . Everywhere is packed. It’s really not easy to find alternative acccomm for family of 5!

I opened this thinking it was about the fires. I live in the affected region and there are currently 6000 people, mainly campers, sheltering in makeshift centres.

I once had an absolutely dreadful holiday in Brittany - accommodation awful, beach covered in seaweed and flies, vaccinated child came down with measles (!), but it wasn't France per se, just bad luck.

There's a lot to loathe here (paperwork, innate racism, shit road manners) but I think your holiday is a combination of bad luck and bad timing (Provence in July).

Hope you are all feeling better soon. A lot of the supermarkets do home delivery and if you're in a major town, try Deliveroo or Ubereats. Bonne chance !

We had a wonderful holiday in France recently, lovely food and people working there were great. Everything went very smoothly. I'd go back in a heartbeat.

I agree France is a nightmare.

But no more of a nightmare than it's always been.

Much nicer in Germany or Holland

Poor you, sometimes everything conspires to make your trip crap!

we once had a horrible trip to Mexico, everything was awful (we stayed in Merida and surrounding area, our hotel had no food and the pool was black and dirty, so many mosquitoes we could not venture out in the evening, went to a different hotel which was also awful. No food. Are our. DS got food poisoning, we spent 2 nights sitting in tiny hotel bathroom eating crisps whilst DS slept it off. DH got sick, we ended up in hospital. It was just such a grim holiday 😄)

We ended up living in Mexico for 3 years, later in our life, and loved it and had many excellent trips.

but sometimes the stars just do not align

take it on the chin, laugh it off, and better luck next time!

Does staying in the UK make it less likely you can get covid.

One kid has covid, the other is being sick. We have barely eaten or slept in over a week, the temperatures are stratospheric. What part of this holiday would you consider to be a ‘positive’ exactly?! It’s SO expensive as well!!!

We went to France in June. It was lovely. Warm and (apart from one day) dry. Friendly staff, clean and functional accommodation where any issues were sorted out very quickly. Resort was clean and well looked after. Excellent food.

OP that sounds absolutely dreadful. Good luck getting home. You should definitely try and break your journey, it might be easier in the U.K. side. Be aware that a proper heatwave is approaching here, 40C in London area on Monday.
Would you mind sharing the details of the hotels that have been so disappointing?

On the upside it hasn’t rained 😄

The only decent part of France is Paris.

You had an awful holiday and sounds like you've caught Covid.

If you hadn't made sweeping criticisms of a whole nation you'd have got more sympathy on the thread.

This made me laugh.
I live in France and the lack of mustard is crazy.
My daughter celebrated when I came back from the shops with a jar I'd found hidden on the top shelf. 😁

40c doesn’t seem too hot anymore after this

What a horrendous trip. I'm sure as others have said you've just been extremely unlucky, but it's still a ruined holiday. Hope you feel better soon.

Yes, it was 14th July (Bastille Day), the national holiday. He surely knew about this in advance, it's pretty well publicised (not just in general that 14th July is France's national day, but in that places will put up signs showing their holiday opening hours and there'll be big public signs in all the towns showing what displays and parties are on). It's a bit like holidaying in the UK and complaining that everywhere was shut on Christmas day, except that you have the chance to attend a village/town party and get food there and have a great time. I'm not blaming your DS, for all I know he might be an 18 year old on his first solo holiday, so it's just something to chalk up to experience, but checking out public holidays in the place you're going to is a fairly normal practice. Well, now he knows anyway. Better luck next time.

You can't describe a country as being on its knees after only holidaying there for what 1 week/10 days.

Wow....which journey did you do?

When we went to the South of France, we planned our journey to avoid the toll roads. I suppose that's experience.

We did drive from Annecy to Dunkirk - and I knew it was a long toll road as we held onto the toll ticket for about 6 hours. - about 50 Euro

www.autoroutes.fr/index.htm

You can see the free autoroutes on this map - there is a well established route on the return to avoid paying tolls

about-france.com/geo/motorways.htm

Sorry that was supposed to be a reply to a previous post.

Sorry you had a horrible time OP.
Summer here is always pretty crazy. Staff can't cope. They don't hire enough so are overworked, tires, hot and can get snappy.
I should know, I work in a restaurant here.

I may have helped other mn posters as they can pack big picnics, water spray and make sure you call restaurants re opening times. Most of the websites are out of date and say they are open when they aren’t due to staffing issues.

It sounds the polar opposite of my trip to France recently.

France is brilliant.