France
I've just spent ten days in France and thus thought I would bore you with some of the observations of this trip.1. Despite much anguish about falling standards French food is still vastly superior in price, quality and quantity terms to British food. This is true of markets, supermarkets, hypermarkers and restaurants. Lunch in particular can be found for about 12 euros for three courses. While on the subject, aren't French hypermarkets enormous? The Auchan in Bolougne in particular is silly-sized. They remind me very much of Walmarts, much more than Tesco for example.
2. French motorways (and indeed A roads) are the best in the world. I suspect this is not so much because you have to pay on them, but because they have so much less traffic, which not only makes them more pleasant to drive on, but makes repairs much easier. I come to this conclusion because the Calais to Lille Autoroute, the A1, does have a lot of traffic, and is terrible.
Could the system be replicated in Britain? No basically for lack of space. Nevertheless despite a belief that they are more skiddy, and thus dangerous, it would be nice if we could use the same tarmac rather than the dreadful concrete which the MoT is currently using (as it's cheaper).
3. The current euro to sterling exchange rate is 1.50 euros to a pound. This is relatively easy to calculate the price of things. However I have realised that when I am in a happy mood the exchange rate in my head turns to 2 euros to a pound. When I was more annoyed it became 1 euro to a pound. As long as the goods and services I spent were constant in pounds between the two moods this works about right.
4. France on Sundays is rather dull. Nothing is open. The 35 hour week should become a 42 hour week immediately.
5. Chardonnay has a bad press. From Chablis it's pretty amazing.
6. I have had first-hand experience of the famed French healthcare system (a filling fell out). You still have to queue in the dentist's reading five-year old magazines.
7. Moet & Chandon have 210 million bottles of champagne in caves beneath their Epernay office. In total nearly 2bn bottles are stored. This is quite a lot. It reminds me of an amusing Churchilll anecdote (which I thought was in Roy Jenkin's biography but I couldn't find it ) whereby towards the end of the war he asked his private secretary, Jock Colville, to estimate how many carriages of his train he would fill with all the champagne he had consumed in his life, and was greatly disappointed to find it was only a couple).
posted by Matthew @ 7/28/2004 11:26:00 AM
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