ilx help me tour FRANCE

TAKE ME WITH YOU

drive on the right

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/graphics/2005/11/22/gift6.jpg

Hey, we're going driving thru France at the end of August too! Let's have Gumball Rally.

Chartres - go and see the cathedral. This is obvious but it is lovely. Also just amble around the town because it has that sort of mid-France general relaxed pleasantness thing down pat.

i'm in yer window killing yer guys

http://www.turkotek.com/salon_00082/s82t2_files/windowdetail.jpg

scott where is that?

Mark, I wouldn't worry too much about driving in France. Same population and three times the area means a lot less traffic on the roads. I hate driving, except in France (Paris excepted - no intention of trying that).

Around Rodez is an area I know particularly well. If you've not been before, I'd recommend Najac and Belcastel, two of France's Prettiest Villages (there's an official list somewhere). Conques is another Pretty Village, but it can feel a bit Disneyfied. Rodez itself isn't bad either and the same goes for Villefranche de Rouergues (has a good market). There are lots of giant churches - more fortress than church - because there was a bit of fightin and persecutin and that.

Food in that area is particularly good too. The local cheeses are Roquefort and Cantal and the local veal (outdoor raised) is spiffy. If you like KNIVES you can get some Laguiole ones for cheap everywhere - Monoprix has the cheapest, though not the best quality. My recommendation to eat is the Mas de Monille Boar Farm. Um, are you vegetarian? If not, the boar is great and the gravy excellent.

Also, the viaduct at Millau is breathtaking.

i am not a vegetarian and i like knives

:) I forgot to mention Albi, which is definitely worth a day if you have one spare or even half a (fairly long) day if you combine it with Millau.

chartres cathedral, mark. one of the wonders of the christian world...

what is the french for BUMP?

le bump

merci

oh oh starry talkin abt TRIPE in another place reminded me one thing i want pointin at = REMARKABLE THINGS TO EAT

(snails and frogs legs yes yes i said REMARKABLE)
(WARNING: escargot tapas = more like eating snot w.garlic and tomatoes than you want to imagine)

Mark, Lucy recommended Najac - if you go there, and you should, you HAVE to eat in the restaurant we did, called (I think - Lucy?) Le Salamandre or something. It was amazing, and the view even more so.

While you're down in the Massif Central try and check out the Gorges du Tarn and go to Pont d'Arc in the Ardeche.

well i still haven't gotten over the andouillette i had one time (emma b described it as "like a giant sausage" so of course i order it, not realising she had left off of her description the crucial information that it was made of intestines and smelled strongly of that fact)

other things to eat: anything with "canard" in the name (and that's the truth! hyuk hyuk) - magret du canard (duck breast/shoulder) for instance; all kinds of liver can be great; etc etc

mark you're going to have such a good time! with a couple of well-placed acootermints you will even LOOK really french, i daresay

http://www.wi-cheshire.org.uk/images/cshow03/halton-scarecrow250x425.jpg

Les grandes cassoulets will be good value I reckon.

Be sure to ask for roast beef and Yorkshire pudding at every restaurant you go to.

there is no french word for pudding

"les puds"

oh no, that's something else

They like le crumble, though.

called (I think - Lucy?) Le Salamandre
That rings a bell, yeah. On the right as you go down the hill through the village. Lara B had pigs' knees in honey and thyme sauce.

ther things to eat: anything with "canard" in the name
I don't get squeamish often, but I draw the line at gesiers de canard.

No, no, on the left I meant! The one on the right had a nice kitten but the food wasn't all that.

"a nice kitten" = filet de mignon

(this joke only works if mignon means kitten which i don't believe it does)

haha i love the gizzards story

it means cute so close enough!

i've been waiting for m. white to weigh in but given the frenchness of his past he probably won't resurface until some time in early september

Don't forget they have road tolls! The A and B roads are more scenic (and free of tolls) but obv. a lot slower than the motorways.

Not sure if you'll be going anywhere near, but this place is apparently amazing : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Cheval

Ferdinand Cheval (1836 - August 19, 1924) was a French postman who spent 33 years of his life building an "Ideal Palace" (French Palais idéal) which is regarded as an extraordinary example of naïve art architecture.

Cheval began the building in April 1879. He claimed that he tripped on a stone and was inspired by its shape. He returned to the same spot the next day and started collecting stones.

For the next 33 years, during his daily mail route, Cheval carried stones from his delivery rounds and at home used them to build his Palais idéal, the Ideal Palace. First he carried the stones in his pockets, then a basket and eventually a wheelbarrow. He often worked at night in the light of an oil lamp. Locals regarded him as a village idiot.

Cheval spent the first two decades building the outer walls. The Palace is a mix of different styles with inspirations from the Bible to Hindu mythology.

Cassoulet in Rodez?

Carcassone is nice.

As is Mille Bournes. :-P

I draw the line at gesiers de canard.

Hand that shit over to me, then. So good on a mâche or frisée salad with baked chèvre chaud and pine nuts.

All yours, mon ami.

Matt#2, is that the place I saw Jarvis Cocker visit in his Outsider Art programme?

That's the one.

Carcassone is nice.

Well, corny and nice.

We got to stay at our rich arse friends amazing house on the water at St Tropez last year.
You should locate a rich arse friend at St Tropez and stay there, it was teh fun.

the big french holiday my famly had when i wz 12, my sister and i spent the ENTIRE time playing mille bournes (korrekt pron = "MILLIE BORNS")

also in the house we were stayin there wz an alfred hitchcock collection of ghost stories which i read avidly and TOTALLY SCARED myself --- omg "THE UPPER BERTH"! my mum wz really cross w.me for being too frightened to go to sleep! bcz i had chosen to read scary ghost stories!! i guess she had a point...

i wonder if my dad remembers where we stayed -- my sister was little, all the other grown-ups (ie mum and his parents) are dead and his memory for this kind of thing is completely terrible :(

on way back, a stop in Lille would be good, 2 hours or so from Calais, great food, amazing beers and the modern art museum is great when there's an exhibition on (less so when not) but also nearby there's Roubaix and La Piscine, the art gallery in a 20's swimming pool is ace.

"amazing beers" = possibly to be avoided unless i pick up a teetotal hitchhiker who is willing to drive! (note to self...)

your car has a boot = Mark S' big moonshine run :)

"a man was arrested at customs yesterday when his car was discovered to be carrying five metric tonnes of budweiser"

anyway bonne nuit tous le monde, more tips tomorrow plz

Tout le monde, tu veux dire. ;)

http://a4.vox.com/6a00c2251d43d2604a00c2251f3e3c8fdb-320pi

last chance ilxors to give un bum steer tres mean mais aussi hilarious!?! i leave tomorrow morning!

Don't drive faster than what's allowed. "but my dashboard's in mph" isn't a good excuse and French police check speed a lot more than you'd expect. At least a lot more than what us belgians are used to, so lots of us get caught all the time since we tend to speed in our own country. (French police: on bridges, behind signs, hidden behind a truck/car with it's bonnet up on the hard shoulder, ...)

i plan to dawdle! i am in no hurry really, it's a holiday w/o deadlines and stuff

if there's a market, go. prices are generally pretty cheap, and the food's great.

take a pair of binoculars, just in case you get some sort of ornithology pang.

that aside, i think the rest of the advice here is pretty sound. take lots of walks. that'll do.

(duh @ my own post there. it's -> its)

there is no french word for pudding

It's quite possible that pudding comes from the French word boudin and, ironically, that the French-Canadian word poutine comes from the English 'pudding'.

poutine de yorkshire every day!

"pudding: c.1305, "a kind of sausage: the stomach or one of the entrails of a pig, sheep, etc., stuffed with minced meat, suet, seasoning, boiled and kept till needed," perhaps from a W.Gmc. stem *pud- "to swell" (cf. O.E. puduc "a wen," Westphalian dial. puddek "lump, pudding," Low Ger. pudde-wurst "black pudding," Eng. dial. pod "belly," also cf. pudgy). Other possibility is that it is from O.Fr. boudin "sausage," from V.L. *botellinus, from L. botellus "sausage" (change of Fr. b- to Eng. p- presents difficulties, but cf. purse). The modern sense had emerged by 1670, from extension to other foods boiled or steamed in a bag or sack. Ger. pudding, Fr. pouding, Swed. pudding, Ir. putog are from Eng. Puddinghead "amiable stupid person" is attested from 1851."

"other foods boiled or steamed in a bag or sack" NOM D'UN NOM NOM NOM

uh, and the next one there:

pud
slang for "penis," 1939, from pudding in the same slang sense (1719); from the original "sausage" sense of pudding (q.v.).

"Pudding is an English mangling of the Old French boudin, from Latin botellus ‘pudding.’ Or it may be that French boudin is of Gaulish provenance and is a diminutive form of the Celtic root bot ‘penis,’ which as bod is still the word for penis in Irish Gaelic or Erse. Thus boudin would first be a joking reference to a sausage as a ‘little penis.’ That Celtic root bot may have been borrowed into early Latin also, to give botellus ‘little penis, sausage...."

From Latin botellus also: English word bowel, medical term BOTULISM!

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