France isn’t Spain
September 6th, 2007 | 
Author: We’ve had quite a run of Brits who live in Spain stay with us on their way to/from the UK over the last few months.
With few exceptions, they have all assumed that southern France will be just like Spain. So the resorts will be fully open ’til November, the restaurants will start serving food from 9pm, and so on.
Well, it isn’t like that at all.
The beach resorts in France start closing up in the first week of September and are almost completely closed down by the end of the second week. Of course, that suits us as we get a jump in bookings for the second two weeks of September.
Far from opening at 9pm, the restaurants here have all closed by then and usually won’t serve you much after 8pm. In fact, by then your choice is usually limited to McDonalds and the like. Even in the busiest week of the year for Perpignan (which is this week), they still close at their normal times. This seems particularly daft this week as the town is full of journalists and there’s a very popular nightly show which runs to midnight yet everywhere is closed by the time it finishes.
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I had to have a bit of a giggle reading the above…
I just had a family of Spanish friends stay for a week – on a schedule wildly different from my own! They rose at 10am, breakfasted, shopped for food, made lunch, ate it at around 3pm, lolled around the table till 5pm, went for a drive into the countryside, came back around 9pm, cooked, and sat down to dinner at around 11pm. Then, it was drinks and chatting around the table (minus me!) until 2am…
I live in France (the northern part of the southeast) and going out is a relatively regimented thing – planning to reach the restaurant not too early (at 7pm the staff are still dining) but by 8:00 they’re starting to wind down the kitchen – my part of the country is much the same as yours!