Bbucko
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March is probably the cheapest but worst time of year to visit France; the weather will be dreadful (cold, wet, miserable for walking and too late for much skiing). Though Paris rarely has a sunny sky, it's unrelentingly gray, drizzly and windy in March.
During the years I lived in Paris in the early 90s, I didn't do quite as much exploration as I'd have liked, but I did get around some, mostly to the south, where a friend's mother had a beautiful home in Collioure, quite near the Spanish border on the coast (Catalan is spoken there, as well as French, just like Barcelona), and we made side trips to Perpignon and Montpelier, both of which were just lovely.
Though I've never been, I understand that Eastern France is quite nice (at least in warmer weather). Dijon was unscathed by both WW1 and WW2 and as a result is practically a museum of architecture from all periods beginning around 1200. Nancy has some of the most outrageous Art Nouveau anywhere in the world, and Strasbourg is considered interesting and beautiful but somewhat dull.
I never made it to western, Atlantic France much to my regret. If nothing else, I'd have liked to have seen Bordeaux.
The food throughout France is uniformly excellent, with a few exceptions worth noting: never eat near a train station or other tourist havens and avoid cuisine that is not specifically French (except Couscous, which is usually very authentic and delicious). They do not do Italian well (the pizza's horrible, expensive and its presentation is overly ostentatious) as red sauces are not usually well done, and anything labeled "American" is simply atrocious and outrageously expensive (I once ate at a place in Paris that served cole slaw as an appetizer for about $14 that was made with yogurt
). Stick to French food and you'll feast like a king. It also helps to have at least some knowledge of French: it needn't be perfect but any attempt will be amply rewarded, especially outside of Paris. At a bare minimum:
*Learn to count to 100, if for no other reason than money;
*Learn how to say "bon jour" and "bon soir" ("hello" and "good evening")
*Learn "parlez-vous anglais?" ("do you speak English?")
*Learn "merci" (thank you) and follow it with either "monsieur" or "madame", depending on the gender of the person who you are thanking.
*Learn the basics of the metric system, especially Celsius conversion; though hardly precise, I found you'll get a rough guide of temperature by doubling the Celsius and adding 32: 12 degrees becomes 24+32=56, which is close enough to know what to wear :tongue:
Much like the English and Americans, French people don't take to learning other languages as a rule; the degree to which they feign ignorance of English may or may not be genuine depending on where you are. In my time there (living about a mile from Bastille), I only met one person (out of literally thousands) whose English was perfect (and with a sexy English accent, to boot) and perhaps ten others whose English was, charitably, mid-way between really bad and incomprehensible. My lover at the time spoke no English whatsoever, and he was 32 when we met.
