Driving in France

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Today was a traveling day and I didn't do much besides drive. Still, I could tell you a little about that. First, though I'll mention dinner last night. My hotel has a wine and cheese cocktail hour every evening. When I finished with that, I wasn't very hungry, but I wanted a little something, so I went to a nearby restaurant and ordered French Onion Soup. Of course they didn't call it that. Instead referred to it as a regional specialty soup, but you and I would call it French Onion Soup. It was delicious and I was glad to have had it in a French restaurant (see photo). Today I drove from Lyon westward across France to Sarlat-la-Canéda, a small town in the Dordogne region. Driving in France is similar to driving in the US with a few exceptions. For one thing, the motorways are nearly always toll roads. Sometimes you take a ticket from a machine as you enter and then feed it into another machine as you exit. On other roads, you just pay a set amount at some point on the journey. The machine tells you how much you owe and you can pay by credit card or with cash. I remember being sometimes slowed down considerably at the tollbooth in previous years, but not so much this year. It may be that more locals are opting for the "Telepage" system where they can whiz right through the collection points because their tolls are measured electronically and automatically. For me, I have learned to keep smaller bills (5s and 10s) handy, as well as a small collection of coins because the French machines don't always recognize US credit cards. On the toll roads, French drivers are quite good about keeping under the speed limit and they never pass on the right. All in all, I like driving French motorways. Lesser roads are more of a problem because they are generally quite narrow with little or no shoulder. And don't get me started about trying to navigate on city streets that were originally designed in the Middle Ages for horses and carts! So anyway, I drove a little over 250 miles today in a little over five hours and arrived in Sarlat with enough time to walk around a little. The Dordogne region is famous for truffles and foie gras. It is the wrong time of year for truffles, but signs for foie gras are everywhere (see photo) and one of the little squares in town has a sculpture dedicated to the geese that make it all possible (see photo). I don't know about you, but to me those geese look a little worried!

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