Friendly French?
The French have the unenviable international reputation of not being very warm with strangers and tourists. In general we have found the opposite to be true. While we have a few bad experiences with people in the service industry who didn’t want to give us the time of day, most are friendly, about 25% of the French we have dealt with or met are interested in who we are and where we are from – willing to engage in conversation, and a small percentage are willing to take the extra step to make us feel very welcome.
The gentleman running the municipal campsite in St. Valery-en-Caux was particularly helpful in making sure that all the facilities were shown to us and were in working order. When he saw Marie-Claire’s last name – Rucquoy – which is admittedly unusual, he said that he had a person in the summer with that name and that their motor home had had a breakdown and had to be taken back to Belgium on a car carrier. Of course, this was Marie-Claire’s sister.
Fello "camping caristes" (motorhomers) have been really friendly, always wanting to chat - tugh its is sometimes a challenge for Roger to follow some of the machine-gun French, especially the jokes. They will stand around for hours chatting.
In Cap d’Agde, the young woman in the Tourist Office was very helpful and friendly. When she learned we were Canadians she recounted her experience visiting Quebec with her parents as a teenager and then driving to Ottawa and Timmins and being impressed with the distances one had to travel. Every day that we came back for more information her greetings remained warm and very friendly.
Maybe Cap d’Agde has something in the air, because it was here that we met a very friendly and helpful young woman when we were riding around on our bikes looking for an Internet outlet in a business called Barracuda. We saw a young woman putting her recyclables in community bins and stopped to ask whether she knew the Barracuda and the street we were looking for because we needed the Internet. She showed us which direction to go and that the Barracuda was just up the street, but she didn’t know of any Internet capacity there. We continued down the street and a few minutes later Roger heard her calling to us as she tried to catch up to us. Turning around we rode back and she offered us the use of her computer in her house. Now that’s what we call extending the hand of friendship to strangers. It turns out that she and her husband are sailors and keep their 10 meter boat in Cap d’Agde. Hats off to Dalila and Olivier!!!!! ( They are now following our trip on this blog).
The gentleman running the municipal campsite in St. Valery-en-Caux was particularly helpful in making sure that all the facilities were shown to us and were in working order. When he saw Marie-Claire’s last name – Rucquoy – which is admittedly unusual, he said that he had a person in the summer with that name and that their motor home had had a breakdown and had to be taken back to Belgium on a car carrier. Of course, this was Marie-Claire’s sister.
Fello "camping caristes" (motorhomers) have been really friendly, always wanting to chat - tugh its is sometimes a challenge for Roger to follow some of the machine-gun French, especially the jokes. They will stand around for hours chatting.
In Cap d’Agde, the young woman in the Tourist Office was very helpful and friendly. When she learned we were Canadians she recounted her experience visiting Quebec with her parents as a teenager and then driving to Ottawa and Timmins and being impressed with the distances one had to travel. Every day that we came back for more information her greetings remained warm and very friendly.
Maybe Cap d’Agde has something in the air, because it was here that we met a very friendly and helpful young woman when we were riding around on our bikes looking for an Internet outlet in a business called Barracuda. We saw a young woman putting her recyclables in community bins and stopped to ask whether she knew the Barracuda and the street we were looking for because we needed the Internet. She showed us which direction to go and that the Barracuda was just up the street, but she didn’t know of any Internet capacity there. We continued down the street and a few minutes later Roger heard her calling to us as she tried to catch up to us. Turning around we rode back and she offered us the use of her computer in her house. Now that’s what we call extending the hand of friendship to strangers. It turns out that she and her husband are sailors and keep their 10 meter boat in Cap d’Agde. Hats off to Dalila and Olivier!!!!! ( They are now following our trip on this blog).
posted by Retired and on the Move | 8:47 AM
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