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!! 🤨

You've had a really miserable experience.

Better luck next time.

I live in France and all the French people I know avoid eating in service stations because the food is over-priced and poor quality. As others have said they take à picnic and stop at an "aire de service."

Week-ends in July and August are terrible times to travel "bison futé" class the days and routes as orange/red/black depending on how much traffic is predicteded and offer advice about what time to leave to avoid the worst of the traffic.

To an earlier poster, it is perfectly fine to drink tap water all over France. Outside taps will have a sign on them "eau potable" if it is safe to drink and "non potable if it is not.

Covid cases have been rising here for weeks; the gouvernment recommended wearing masks on public transport again several weeks ago. There is still à légal requirement to self-isolate if you test positive so someone should have reported the people coughing around the pool.

Obviously if your hôtel advertised a restaurant they should have provided one but my expérience in France is that most hotels only offer breakfast and people would expect to eat out in the evening (but not before 7.00 pm at the earliest).

There is still a culture of staff having 2 days off in a row so lots of restaurants shut Sunday and Monday and many small shops shut Monday morning.

I have never understood why cafés and restaurants in tourist areas shut for annual leave for several weeks over the summer but I guess for their employees with school age children it is good because it means they are on holiday at the same time as their children.

Why oh why would a vegan go on holiday in France?

Seems to be bad all over - can't blame Brexit for the European woes!

Australia and the US are bad too. So much out of stock and supply chains are disrupted world-wide.

I am in Menorca everything is beautiful here ! Abundance of lovely food and the hotel and grounds are immaculate!! The sea is so clear and warm ! It was a last minute package holiday and we had a great deal 😊

Provence looks to have lots of traffic jams at the moment

Sorry

www.autoroutes.fr/en/Realtime-traffic-information.htm

But it is a weekend in summer

Dear OP - haven't read all the thread but just want to say get back home before Monday so you will not be driving through predicted 40degrees predicted heat for a lot of UK.

I love France spent months there and was at one stage virtually fluent in the language. But now only ever pass through it on my way to Spain.
I would never holiday in France unless I was visiting Paris to do all the sights or having a few days in Monte Carlo. Neither of which is in my price range anymore.

The road tolls were very expensive the last time we went pre Covid. It sounds like they have been hiked up.

Apart from how expensive it has become, everything seems to close so early.
Walk into a restaurant at 8.30pm and they look at you as though you must be abnormal wanting to eat so late

I really feel for you. I have had some shit holidays. It doesn’t help when people imply you are lying because when they went on holiday to a different destination 3 years ago it was perfect.

As much as I love France and did once want to live there I can see with the bureaucracy and red tape, their closing hours and amount of Bank Holidays when nothing is allowed to open, it all adds to the lack of staff and food distribution problems.

We might blame a lot of stuff on Brexit and Boris but a lot of countries who don’t have a Boris and are still in the EU are having their own problems

.

Can I ask what the average price of a litre of diesel is in France at the moment (accept motorway services will be more expensive)?

We're off to France next week and debating whether to fill up in the UK or wait until we're accross the channel.

Sorry you had a bad holiday OP

www.bison-fute.gouv.fr/samedi-16-juillet-departs.html

This is the link to bison futé with its predicted traffic jams for today

Novotels work out best for family rooms en route

I think you’ve been unlucky. We went to France recently and drove down 8hr to the south west with 2 kids so lots of stops. Couldn’t fault any service stop or smaller rest stop and spent the whole trip saying how wonderful the roads and services were compared to the UK. We stayed in a gite self catering and this was great so can’t compare hotel experience though.

So sorry you have had such a miserable time Provenceinthesummer. I think it's because you've broken the rule among some Mumsnetters that everything is always perfect in France. Still I expect if you'd gone to Blackpool and had a horrible time, there would be posters criticising you for not going to France.

I hope your drive home is safe and not too uncomfortable.

Skinnermarink 😀😀 Your post really made me laugh. Thanks!

Parched, starving and exhausted...

And the nominee for best fiction 2022 is...

🙄

@Flumpaphone
Just under 2€/litre but will be considerably more on motorways

I was in France last month. Glorious weather (as expected), cleanliness as expected (there are always some grim places, there are everywhere, but mostly excellent) and zero difficulties with getting food.

I don't understand eating exclusively in hotels, what's the point of going abroad if you're not going to experience the local area & cuisine and support the local economy?

Both ferries I went on were earlier than expected and zero queues. The journey home was awful and I tested positive the day after we got home. But I'm not going to brand the whole of France as awful based on one rubbish journey. YABVVVU.

Leave France for the rest of us to enjoy!

That's why we normally go towards the end of August.

Obviously if your hôtel advertised a restaurant they should have provided one but my expérience in France is that most hotels only offer breakfast and people would expect to eat out in the evening (but not before 7.00 pm at the earliest

There is still a culture of staff having 2 days off in a row so lots of restaurants shut Sunday and Monday and many small shops shut Monday morning

So if hotels don’t have restaurants and restaurants close 2 days per week.

Where are you supposed to eat?

Thank you @Roseau18 think we'll get accross then fill up, might save a few pennies

Not the France I know

We had a lovely holiday in France this year, lovely hotels, the best food. I honestly didn't want to come back.

But fortunately we were able to time it well : we weren't traveling in the middle of a huge wave of covid and a severe heatwave.

I hope you feel better soon.

@Flumpaphone we found France a bit cheaper although not much in it. Same as the UK it was much cheaper away from the toll roads, we'd generally use a petrol station at a large supermarket.

The ‘sacred’ French lunchtime thing can be a pain until you know. Even in really touristy areas, where in just about every other country I’ve visited (a lot) people would be only too happy to feed you and take your money, you can be very sniffily told that in France, lunch is from 12 to 2, so bog off.

In a lovely medieval town that’s def. on the tourist trail, the four of us knew we were too late for lunch, but did find a cafe where they said we could have a croque monsieur, no problem.
However the waitress who came to the table was so sulky and flouncy that my French! sister in law was livid enough to insist that we walk out on the spot.

I was starving and dying for that croque monsieur, too. 😩

Don't buy food at service stations pop into a supermarket & buy stuff to make lunch at an aire

It's not a binary choice between everything is perfect and a country is on its knees.

To say a country is on its knees based on 1 holiday, with poor planning and research, is 'countryist' - if that's even a word....

People who actually live in the UK, who work here, live here and experience it - they are in a much better place to criticise the UK.