Best advice I had, on a motorbike at least, was to fill up even if your tank is half full because you may not make it to the next station. It’s a bigger country than maps seem to indicate.
Learn some French – it
will be appreciated. If you can count to ten and say please and thank you in French it’s surprising how much you can get by.
Don’t go to Paris if you think it’s going to be clean; it isn’t! If you don’t like smokers don't go there. It’s almost a law that you smoke once you reach puberty; they should have a nub-end on their national flag.
I have heard many times that if you
do get done for a traffic offence they will literally frog march you, (no pun intended), to a cash point if you aint got the money. They have a stupid and unfair law for French motorbikes, limited to 100 bhp. (So why not also limit cars?).
On the up side: -
They have a Laissez-faire attitude, unlike this damn country. I know of a story where a biker who’d had too much to drink started to pull wheelies for show outside the bar. The police just told him to stop pratting around and get back to his hotel or he’ll spend the night in jail. Contrast that to what ‘we’, our police, would do! (Fine, points, banned, insurance through the roof...)
The croissants are bigger and better than anything I’ve seen over here.
The women are thin and pretty, unlike our ugly English heifers, probably because their taste buds are covered in nicotine and their appetite correspondingly subdued.
Their accent is a real turn-on. Hec, I felt I could’ve snogged a bloke if he’d offered.
The countryside is stunning, with better weather too.
They have a higher, more sensible, speed limit.
