Car Parking

In contrast to the post about the toilets, the French are very good at many things from car parking to food. I have only been here a few days but watching the small spaces that cars can and have got into is amazing. Any little nook and cranny seems to be capable of holding a car. In most of Britain, London excepted?, you need at least two foot at either end of your car once it is in the space in order to get into it. Here you can halve that at least. I guess if you have a lot of practise you know exactly where the bumpers of your car are and how to get into small spaces, but I am impressed. I don’t know if I want to try it..
As you might expect many cars have scrapes and dents down them, so I suspect that in parking tightly many of them scrape bollards, nudge up too tightly to other vehicles and so forth. I think it was a good thing not to bring my fairly new car down here!

Thinking of food. I could get used to popping into a boulangerie for a sandwich most lunchtimes. We are not talking your delicate triangular British jobs, sur ou sans crusts, but full-on demi-baguettes. Your typical French sandwich will set you back 3-4 euro, but be 30cm long and full of salad, ham, tuna, egg, meat, cheese etc. I had a particularly good goats cheese and salad one yesterday (Thursday), although I didn’t understand how much it was and had to hold out my handful of change to have the relevant 3.50 extracted from it. Such is the life of a poor, but hopefully improving, French speaker.

Anyone for a fresh croissant or pain au chocolate as I pass the bakery?