france is closed

In most of the towns and villages we've visited, Kat and I have had the luxury of wandering quiet streets with the town all to ourselves.

Partly this is because all the tourists have inexplicably disappeared. We're not sure where they've gone... Paris? Home? But they've probably left because, it seems, the rest of France is only sporadically open.

Pretty much everything - including restaurants - is closed on Sundays, although patisseries are open for a few hours in the morning. Lots of places are closed Monday too.

Every other day of the week, almost every other business - patisseries, boulangeries, the post office, grocery stores, tourist offices, you name it - opens around 10, closes at noon, then opens again - maybe - for a few hours in the afternoon.

Restaurants are open for lunch, but only from 12 - 2 (after that, they'll serve you a beer, but not so much as a peanut to eat with it), then again for dinner after 6 pm or so.

Most places are also closed one arbitrary day per week - which, for Kat and I, is inevitably the day that we're in that village.

We walked by a hair salon that's open only on Thursday afternoons and Saturday mornings; a brasserie that was closed so the employees could "work", and a small epicerie (grocery store) that is open different hours every day of the week.

After a couple hungry days wondering how the French could be so spectacularly uninterested in selling us a pastry, we figured out the system, and travel with spare croissants and cheese in our backpacks for those afternoons when we get to the village just as they're rolling down the shutters.

I've come to enjoy the less hectic pace of a world where you can't buy anything you want, 24 hours a day, although I do find myself hoarding the pain au chocolat - just in case.

2300 km, and another 2000 to go

Before I arrived, I was so consumed with the details of working out the who-where-when for this trip - meeting two different friends in two different countries - that I didn’t take the time to really look at a map and figure out distances.

So as usual, my plans have turned out to be exceptionally ambitious. An 11 hour flight from Vancouver to Frankfurt, followed by a 4 hour train ride to Munich, followed (two days later) by a 5 day, 2100 km road trip through Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the French Alps, Provence, and the Cote D’Azur (whew), before finally arriving at our villa in the Dordogne, just east of Bordeaux (which is on the Atlantic coast).

In a couple of days, I start working my way slowly back towards Munich, then fly to London.

If anyone ever says that Europe is small… don’t believe them.

what's french for qwerty?

Just over two weeks in Europe, and this is only the second time I've managed to sit down at a computer since I arrived.

My first attempt was at the youth hostel in rainy Carcasonne (never thought I'd be staying in one of those again, but who can resist staying within the walls of a medieval castle city, complete with moat?), where I paid a euro for 20 minutes access.

After spending most of it trying to find where they'd put all the letters (no "qwerty" on a french keyboard) and surfing for some sunny weather, I decided to spend my remaining euros drinking wine in the bar rather than do further battle to write a few emails.

Fortunately, my tech-savvy villa-mates are well equipped with English laptops and Wi-Fi hacking skills so I'm finally able to get my proper Internet fix!