Parent Opinions of France

I am trying to convince my mother to write a blog entry about their impressions of France. I seem to have gotten emails or calls from virtually every French friend we know recently, all wanting to know what my parents thought of France. This morning I wrote a reply to our friend Sophie, and thought I would copy it here as well, just for a quick rundown of what seemed to be the basic impressions:

My parents had a great time, and already want to come back. They liked it here very much, and though they were happy to go back home, they said it also felt like leaving "home" too.

They really loved the bakeries here, and the chocolate shops everywhere - every place we went walking, they always had to go stare through the windows of the chocolate shops and smell the bread shops (An entertaining recurring theme in the video we shot). I think they got quite addicted to having fresh bread for breakfast every morning. It is just a shame that we can't ship chouchettes by mail!

It was funny seeing things through "new eyes" again. We got very frustrated with them when they seemed hesitant about EVERYTHING... We kept saying, "Just try it, eat it, it won't kill you" but they seemed convinced that every food dish was secretly made from snail testicles. (Probably they take too many of my jokes about French food seriously)

They were really impressed by the TGV (despite it breaking) and the tram lines in cities. One (if a European reader) must understand that we don't have much public transport in the US, and what we have is usually so god-awfully bad that it just makes you want to drive your own car that much more. We even nicknamed our own high-speed train Amtrack "the Death Train" because it crashes so often.

My parents were horrified by the medieval toilets in villages, and thought that new French houses were frighteningly conformist (they all really look identical) but they loved the tile roofs and dad was impressed by the widespread use of hot water heating. Mom thought all the "tiny cars" were cute. I suspect they both had an eye-widening experience at the cost of gas here. Oh, and there was much amusement about the miniature sizes of everything - the showers, the fridge, the stove, the washer & dryer, etc. Yes, we live in an HO scale house.

More to come, if I can convince my mother to write it herself...