We had been driving since early morning and decided to stop at the next town for coffee. After following what seemed like a multitude of spandex clad cyclists for quite a few kilometers before passing them I needed a little break. It was a village like most others, built of stone with the highest structure being the church. And across the street from the church was a cafe.
I eased the Peugeot to the curb and parked near the cafe. There are no marked parking spaces in French villages. You simply park where you find space out of the way of traffic. We found an empty table on the sidewalk of course. Only about three of the half dozen or so tables are occupied. There was a huge tree with a trunk about one meter in diameter in the center of the outdoor dining room. I relaxed and stretched a bit. It was good to get out from behind the wheel of the compact car. We waited what seemed like forever before realizing there was no wait staff. No one had pointed this out. The French aren't very chatty like the folks across the English channel. Perhaps because of some sort of language barrier? And, of course, everyone there was a local and knew there was no wait staff. In the small towns and villages we were ususally asked if we were English. Probably because of the language we spoke and because the people from the United Kingdom were the most common English speakers in France.
I went inside to the bar counter through sliding glass doors to get our two cafe au laits. They cost me two euros each; in Paris they would have cost me five each. It was good to relax in the morning shade with a nice coffee. It was reasonably quite. The old fellow reading the morning paper made little noise. But a group of men were having a very noisy card game. I remember six players. They seemed to range in ages from thirty to fifty-five and appeared to be delivery men, shopkeepers, carpenters and such. The French are extremely animated card players as they would throw their cards on the table with great fanfare. Usually with what seemed like an expletive. I'm sure I heard some good old Anglo-Saxon curse words in there somewhere. I think they were gambling and using small squares of colored paper for gambling chips. The game had a gallery of old men in hats and sweaters with walking canes looking on.
There was a table of French women too. And a young woman came by to chat with them. She had a small child in a stroller and she was impeccably dressed. From her high-heeled shoes to the perfect coiffure she looked fantastic. Perfectly color co-ordinated and made up. I'm not sure where she was going or just out with her offspring to be seen, but she was eye-candy. I can only say "Ah, the French!"
The helmeted cyclists in rainbow-colored Spandex went by quietly, like some sort of apparition. Much to my chagrin I would have to pass all of them again on a narrow French country road.
I had to use the restroom before we got back on the road. The barman pointed me in the right direction. Upon return to the table I voiced my opinion to my travel bud. If the French could build such technological wonders as the world's largest airliner, why couldn't they have a decent sit-down toilet? A few days earlier we seen Roman toilets from the first century that you sat on unlike the twenty-firsts century French ones you had to squat to use.
My travel bud decided she would wait until the next town and hope for a Roman style toilet.
A note about our mode of transport. The Peugeot 206+ diesel we rented in Roeun from what seemed to be the French equivalent of a 7-eleven. By renteng from an agent , Hertz, about ten blocks from the train station we saved about 50% on rental costs. Yes, you do pay for convience! I enjoyed driving the small car with standard 5-speed transmission. I had plenty of pep and easily kept up with traffic on the tollways at 130kph. The compact size was great in the narrow medieval streets too.
I love this post. It transports me to the time and place of the writer and I feel I get to have that first-hand experience too!
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