Denouement Dashboard - France

This is the place I will cover the stats of each country as we go.

As usual, follow along at:

Anyway, let's get into it:

France: 31/10-7/11/23

We already covered the northern chunk of France in ‘Denouement Dashboard - Euro Trip Ep. 1’ and some of the centre in ‘Euro Trip Ep. 4 ’ from back in July. So this edition covers the southern leg.

Tracks:

Rough rules: I will count the flight (or bus) TO that country as tracks IN that country.

Automobiles:

Andorra - Saint-Tropez = 632 km
Saint-Tropez - Nice = 112 km
Nice - Carcassonne = 470 km

Walking:

29.8 km

Total = 1,143.8 km

Expenses:

Rough rules: I will count the flight (or bus) TO that country as an expense IN that country.

And here I am not going to do the whole ‘France Expenses’ since the first time through northern France would confound these eight days. I’ll do the total French expenses at the end.

Total expense: $4,579.19 AUD (for those 8 days)

Total Days: 8 Days inclusive

Expense per day = $572.40 AUD/Day

I’ll do the pie chart for France at the end.

Travel Bingo:

The Influencer - I

(Again, this one lonely off season influencer will need to be added to the pile of high season influencers from the first jaunt through France.)

An explanation of Travel Bingo is here.

Culinary Corner by a Non-Foodie:

You really always can find good food in France. Local little bakeries in the suburbs all have a pretty high standard of baguette sandwich and pastries.

Tips and Tricks:

Honestly, avoid Saint-Tropez. It has so clearly crossed that uncanny valley where you feel you are visiting a theme park. Sure, it was once a sleepy fishing village where the rich and famous used to hide on holidays. Now, it’s…not. It is just a place to be seen in the high season for the sake of being seen in Saint-Tropez - effectively a film set, or one of those studios in shopping centres where twenty boppers go to film their Tik Tok dances. If you want an 11 Euro coke for the privilege of sitting in a cafe, go for it. Otherwise there’s not much there for the common folk.
Nice is not nice. Again, the lovely facade of old buildings along the coast is beautiful. But literally two streets back you will hear no French and see police units continually patrolling and stopping young men for questioning. It is very seedy and looks to be about dead. Until, of course, it gets back to July/August high season and everyone pretends it is great again. The Mediterranean coast of Europe is not doing too well.

Recommendations:

Carcassonne is, in fact, fantastic. Incredibly well preserved, fairytale-style fortress city on a hill. (With a history going back to the Romans…) There are a couple of nice hotels built into the old town which are great. There are restaurants inside the wall, some seasonally shut, but a surprising number with Michelin recommendations. And the streets are just lovely to walk. Not more than a couple of days because it is still fairly small, but a really cool spot to visit.
The hotel we stayed at in Nice was hilariously bad - we chose it because we were in town for Casey’s Pole Dancing Competition and it was a recommended accomodation site. We started reading Google Maps reviews on locations after that…

Summary:

Mediterranean coastal France is, overall, seedy and becoming a little bit too vibrant for comfort. The shame is that the coast is geographically lovely, but the cities where you might actually have to stay have really copped a kicking from COVID and non-European immigration.
Just as in our first jaunt through France, the interior really is lovely and more French tourism should head that way.

Thanks for reading along.

The next country update will come... after the next country.

Weekly updates will come...weekly.

Luke.