Driving in the South of France

Côte d'Azur, France

13th April 2009

We spent this weekend driving around the Côte d'Azur in the South of France. We got some sunshine but it was mostly overcast.

We rented a Fiat 500 which looked nice and sleek and was small enough that when French and Italian drivers scrapped against our car they'd have no excuse. Shame the vehicle could barely make it up any hills or get any speed going. I thought this vehicle was designed by Italians?

We ended up driving all the way from Menton, through Monaco, Nice, Cannes, Agay and St. Raphaël.

A few things that struck me about France this time around:

Assholes
Most people working in service industries act like life owes more to them, this is why they behave the way they do. If they are being cheeky assholes, it's because they don't know any better and haven't been exposed to another way of life before. Maybe there's something wrong with me for wanting to be treated normally when I pay for stuff? My guess is that everything is taxed so much in France it's got to the point that it's now a centrally-planned communist state and that the people serving us food won't actually get any money at the end of the day.

Language Barriers
If I ask you "Parlez-vous anglais?", it's not really a question like "Do you like kittens?". It's a command to start speaking in English. Answering "Oui." will just wind me up. I don't want to start out my introduction to you like some Anglo-Saxon colonist or let it be known that no Anglophone in Canada can speak French properly so I am going to let you think you're in control of the protocol by spitting out three or four words of French. Because I can't be bothered to read any of the dusty French books in my house, we'll need to move to a common format. I don't use UDP much on the internet, now do I? TCP motha fuckas! :)

Driving
Stay in one lane unless you are changing lanes. Driving between two lanes for 30KM+ is just being fucking retarded. The driver doesn't need to be centred in the lane, the car does. The driver should be a bit off to the left. Use your reference points! I saw a lot of driving schools in Nice, they are all fronts for brothels and gang hangouts. There couldn't possibly be a market to support that many driving schools as no one with a French license has actually received formal training in operating a motor vehicle.

As well, please move all the shit covering up your road signs. Some of us don't have French residency permits and may not know the route from Monaco to Cannes without looking at road signs. Most French seem to know the way not only by not looking at direction signs, but speed signs, other cars signalling and how their car is taking up two lanes. Pretty fucking impressive.

So French people, in exchange for sorting these items out, I'll offer you a few photos of your lovely part of the world. They really does remind me how the rest of us live like animals compared to you lot :)