Observations about France

I write this post from the high speed train taking us from Paris to Avignon, and wanted to share a few final thoughts. First I feel I must dispel a myth - the French people have been gracious, helpful and patient most everywhere we went. For some reason I heard before I came from lots of people telling me how rude they were to Americans -I just didn't find that to be true (except perhaps one worker in the French cell company-but that was more because we bought our SIM card on Amazon and not from his shop). Hotel, restaurants, transportation workers, even strangers we met at dinner (or on the street asking for directional help) were lovely.  

What is true about the French people?  Well every young woman, and many older ones, wear their own distinctive bright red lipstick.  No beret sightings (except on giggling tourists), but both men and women wear elaborately arranged scarves.  They smoke  a lot, and that means any outdoor meal risks secondhand lung cancer.  They go on strike; we are in the midst of a 3 day transit strike that has limited the number of trains running.  And driving is insane.  French signs are mysterious to us. We followed what seemed like good signs to non-existent train stations, learned to ignore signs pointing left when the destination was clearly on the right. Like these two examples for a museum and a bathroom, both of which were wrong. 

I  also believe it must be written into the city codes that no Parisian child can be more than 6 blocks from a carousel. They were everywhere - here are just a small sampling  

Wear your walking shoes because the sites of Paris are farther apart than they seem-and probably involve more stairs. 

Though sometimes the stairs come nicely decorated. 

Still, you'll be walking. 

I'm not sure how much of these truths will hold as we move to rural Provence.  I'm enjoying the sitting here on the train while I can.