The Cost of French Travel ?
By GLYN E. DANIEL T T this time of the year a middle-aged man's fancy turns to thoughts of travel and, eagerly, as from Easter to Whitsun the bookshops restock with current travel literature, and the papers issue travel supplements, he buys his guides and maps—and he plans. And, from all the statistics we are given, his plans are mainly directed to travel in and through France. Here are four essential books for the traveller to France this sumnter,* and he cannot avoid saving the cost of them, by merely using them when he gets abroad. First and foremost comes the 1956 Guide Michelin, so often called the tourist's bible. As in any good bible, here be fleshpots and much eating of bread with joy and drinking of wine with a merry heart. But it would be very unfair to France and French hoteliers to treat Bibendum as infallible; the Guide Michelin has always been careful to say that it offers only a selection of hotels and restaurants, and how could it be. otherwise? Paris has six thousand hotels and restaurants; Michelin lists a tenth of these, and this list is bound to miss some of everyone's favourites. But even if it is not infallible and omniscient, it is indispensable.
Last year it contained a list of restaurants where one could get excellent meals for 700 francs; this year this list of these —for France. cheap—restaurants is well over a hundred and this is a feature most welcome to British tourists. I stayed in one of these 'cheap' houses in February; it was in a small country town between Orleans and Le Mans. I paid 350 francs for a very' good dinner consisting of. a vegetable soup, an escalope de veau a la creme with haricots verts (my wife was eating the alternative dish, a coq an yin), cheese, and fruit. ' Our bedroom was 450 francs and breakfast 90 francs a head. Garage in the old stables was free. Dinner, including a bottle * GUIDE DU PNLU MICHELIN: FRANCE 1956, 22s.; LES AUBEROES DR FRANCE: 1956, 750 francs; GUIDE DES LOUIS DE FRANCE: 1956, 300 francs; Drat: ROADS TO SPAIN. By Dawson Gratrix. (Herbert Jenkins, 6s.) of wine, bed and breakfast and all service and taxes was 1,700 francs, i.e., 18s. 6d. a head.
This is the answer to those who say France is expensive, and there are many of them : Wendy Hall in her recently' published Abroad on the Cheapt is constrained to say that France 'remains, as most travellers know, a highly expensive country.' She admits that inexpensive room accommodation can be found without difficulty but, she adds, 'it is largelY offset by the high cost of food.' Not largely, I would say. and, to my way of thinking and living, it is still easy foi travel in France to be cheaper than average travel in England. It is always important to insist that in France you can spend. within certain limits, what you want to spend. You can choose cheap hotels and cheap meals; you can dine for 5s. or £2. It is also important to realise this year that French costs have not gone up in the last year as ours have. I have been com- paring carefully meal, room and pension charges at six hotels whose costs I have been watching since the war—one in Paris, another in north Burgundy, a two-starred hotel in Maine, a small hotel on the causses, a fashionable hotel in Brittany'. and a small middle-class hotel in Provence : costs are much the same as two years ago—in some places small increases. elsewhere some prices have actually dropped.
Les Auberges de France, the book of recommendatio6 by the Club des Sans-Club, the Guide published by that rem, able organisation the Logis de France, and frank notes those in Dawson Gratrix's book will help you to these places. I have been fascinated to go through the Guide des Logis noting how many places in France, in 1956, are providing full pension in the season for a pound a night or slightly less: and sometimes with vin compris.
Mr. Gratrix is an ordinary person who loves food, scenery. leisure, wine, and France, and doesn't intend to pay too much for these pleasures. Read him with care; he specialises in the cafés routiers, the Gallic equivalent of our transport- cafés. Hear him on his lunch at the Café des Routiers at Figeac 'a dozen Burgundian snails . . . a chopine of red wine . . . roast duckling and grilled tomatoes . . . salad . cheese . . . patisseries . . . I emerged . . . a very much better man and lighter by only 430 francs.' That is the way to live.
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