Archive for the ‘Tourist Events’ Category
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When to book a holiday in the south of France
January 21st, 2007 | 
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Most people think of the south of France as purely a Summer holiday destination but in reality it’s pretty much an all year round one.The July/August period is probably the very worst time to go to the south on holiday. Temperatures are almost always above 30c and frequently clear 40 which makes for a very exhausting time for many activities. In fact, neither walkers nor cyclists attempt to do anything from about mid-July to the end of August.
Even aside from the heat, you’ll find that the traffic is heavier than the roads are geared up for. We’ve given up trying to get down to some of the beach resorts over most of the Summer as we found that we were sitting an hour or more in traffic and then found that we couldn’t park anywhere when we did get to the resort as there’s so little public transport everyone ends up going in their car. On some peak days, even the motorway grinds to a halt as we reported in August.
If you want the heat it’s still there just outside that peak period and pretty much anytime from April to October is t-shirt weather here most of the time. Aside from Easter and during the grape harvest in September the traffic is very light and you’ll find it relatively easy to get accommodation booked too.
The Autumn is a little peculiar here. Due to the heat in the Summer, most places end up looking rather burnt and the grass only starts to grow again in September. That makes for quite an odd time colour-wise. After the grape harvest in late August/early September the vines start to adopt the normal Autumn colours but at the same time pretty much everything else is starting to grow after the weather cools down a little. This stretches out the Autumn period right into January.
Although the cold season runs from around mid January through to the end of February, calling it the “cold season” is quite misleading as many of those days are t-shirt weather. Unlike in more northern areas of Europe, when it’s sunny here, it’s warm regardless of the time of year. Where you need to be careful is with the altitude as even a few hundred metres can mean the difference between warm (hot even) and very cold. For instance, here at Mas Camps we have had one day of snow in the time that we’ve been here yet just 30 minutes or so to the west is the village of St Paul which generally gets proper Winter weather from around January to March. The boundary is very marked and you can find the western edge of the village in snow whilst the eastern edge is in t-shirt weather.
Anyway, why not think of a short break in the south of France right now to escape the cold and storms in the UK?
This is part of our guide to the Pyrenees.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.Christmas markets in Belfast compared to France
This year, Belfast has put on a Christmas market with a continental theme in front of the City Hall. One of the things that we found a little peculiar about it is that it actually has more French stalls than the Christmas markets in Perpignan. Of course, it also has substantial representations from Germany, Italy and even China. That’s something that you don’t get in France. For the most part, it’s either French or it isn’t there.
That applies to pretty much everything in fact. In a French supermarket, you get French cheese. In a UK supermarket you get UK cheese, Swiss cheese, German cheese and, of course, French cheese. Whereas even the largest French supermarket has only a tiny “ethnic” foods section, a typical UK supermarket doesn’t have an ethnic section at all because the food in the aisles is from everywhere. There are hardly any Australians living in Belfast yet it’s possible to buy Vegemite in Tesco; in France you’d need a really major supermarket to stock it.
Some would say: why shouldn’t it be French food in France? Well, obviously you would expect to have more French food in France than anything else but in every other country in the world you seem to get a reasonable representation of a selection of other cultures. The closed mentality in France makes that the rare exceptions to the “France only” rule very pale in comparison to the equivalent elsewhere.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.Port Aventura: what is there to see and do?
Although now owned by Universal Studios, it hasn’t, yet, had the full American makeover and overall has a much more laid-back feeling about it than the American parks usually do. Woody Woodpecker isn’t nearly so much “in your face” as Micky Mouse is for instance which is a plus. On the other hand the customer service doesn’t approach American standards which is quite a downer in some ways, for instance we weren’t given a park guide nor was there much information about show times.
What’s in Port Aventura though? It’s divided into four themed areas: Polynesia, China, Mexico and the Wild West. Both China and the Wild West areas had quite a strong sense of theming but it seemed a little superficial in the other two. The Polynesian show was the only major one that we saw (as noted, there was little information about show times so we may have missed heaps of them) and was reasonable although as I’ve been to Polynesia I might be a little harsh in my criticism of this one. None of the rides in the Polynesian area take small kids.
To my mind, Port Aventura’s Wild West area was by far the best with a very high density of small rides and activities plus a few larger rides at the edges. However, if you’re wanting the more adventurous rides, head for Mexico or perhaps Polynesia instead.
There’s the usual train running around Port Aventura but with only two stops which are poorly marked on the maps, we were pretty much leaving the park before we found one of them (in the Wild West). The boat between the entrance area (just before you go into the themed areas of the park) and China was easier to find but we were told that we couldn’t go on it from China as we had a pram. As it turned out, this was nonsense as we were able to go in the other direction but is an example of the much lower level of custmer service as compared to a true American park.
Pay attention to the prices in the Port Aventura shops too. We found that some things were going through the till at twice the prices marked.
Anyway, overall, Port Aventura is a nice enough park but avoid it if you have any kids under 1.2m high and keep an eye on the prices.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.Fenouilledes Car Rally 2006 around Auberge Mas Camps
Rallying is pretty tiring, at least for us! Just one of the guests turned up in the afternoon and the rest arrived after midnight. Usually a late arrival means a late departure but as the next stage was due to start around 8.45am, the rally officials who checked-in around 1.30am had to leave around 7am.
The Fenouilledes car rally is a little odd in that the main roads aren’t closed so we often saw slow moving vans being followed by a posse of rally cars. The net effect of that was that as the normal road traffic reduces drastically after about 7pm, the night speeds of the cars were considerably higher.
Whereas they arrive at Mas Camps via a relatively small backroad on Saturday, the Sunday route takes them down the long straight directly in front of us as you can see so it’s not quite so easy to take a decent photo.
With the late night last night we’re glad that there’s nobody staying this evening so we can take it a little easier to recover.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.Fenouilledes Car Rally 2006 from Auberge Mas Camps
We’re actually fully booked by the organisers of the rally Association Sportive Automobile-Club du Roussillon (l’ASA-Roussillon) but so far only one couple has arrived as, I think, most of those who are staying with us are the support personnel for the rally so are presently at various points along the route.
The route today takes the cars along the back road past our main entrance where there’s a sharp bend just in front of the winery and one guy managed to wrap his car around the tree right at the end of the 1km or so straight a few years ago. Nothing so spectacular, so far, this year but it’s not a bad spot to take photos from all the same.
No results in as yet as we can still hear the cars roaring past our driveway.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.
