1. You can no longer tell a French person from an American by their dress. That seems new this trip and I noticed this both in Burgundy and Brittany. Both men and women wear shorts. Sneakers are on most feet. T-shirts with logos (often American at least in style) are popular as are baseball caps with NY or even Yankees on them. I chuckled at one bright T-shirt today that said: "Meilleur papi dans le monde" (Best grandpa in the world). Fewer women are wearing the tell-tale accessory of a scarf.
2. Bicycles are everywhere and they are ridden by all ages. One sees many electric bikes too. They are really useful for traveling in crowded cities, where traffic congestion seems constant and towns continue to have lots of one way streets and few parking spaces. (Also, with gas at $9 per gallon, driving is discouraged.) There are even racks of rent-a-bikes (electric) around some towns. You rent with a credit card and return it to another bike rack somewhere else in town.
3. Busses are everywhere too. We saw downtown electric busses that were free to ride. (Discouraging people from driving into the crowded city centers. There seem to be public transportation by bus options to travel from town to town. And people use the transportation system. We could do better in the US.
4. Scooters, especially electric ones, are everywhere. From toddlers to business men and women, this form of transportation is really popular. With the electric scooters, you can even give a ride to a friend. Since scooters fold up, they are more easily stashed at school or work, making them an attractive mode of transportation in the city.
5. French towns are really clean. (We're also in more touristy areas.) There's rarely trash lying around and town workers can frequently be seen cleaning up sidewalks and bagging any litter. I remember when you had to be careful where ever you walked not to step in dog poop. These days, it is rare to see dog poop anywhere in public. There are dog poop bag dispensers in every park and in strategic locations around towns and cities. I see people using them. Which is good because dogs are everywhere. They are allowed in restaurants and stores. They are almost always on leash and they are generally really well-behaved. I think I see more dogs than kids in the streets.
6. Handicapped accessibility is improving. Many tourist sites now have accommodations for handicapped people. I see more people with canes, in wheel chairs, or with walkers now than previously. Most public bathrooms have a handicapped toilet. We've seen video presentations that had someone signing in a window on the screen.
7. Getting information in English seems to be improving. Most places have English brochures and maps and the folks in the tourist office speak good English (as you'd hope). There's much more online information that can be downloaded to your cell phone and will play at the appropriate time in a tour of some historic place. But it's still a bit patchy and can be hit or miss. But in the future, Internet access by phone is going to be more important for travelers. But it's still important to make an effort to communicate even if only using a few words of French. It goes a long way to getting help.
8. When we were in Burgundy, we could see vistas across fields. As Janis said, we could see the next village a couple of kilometers ahead. But here in Brittany, it's different. For one thing, it seems more forested. There are tall trees and bushes next to the road with no views of what lies beyond the sides of the road. The land seems flatter than Burgundy with more grazing land and fewer crops. But that could just be a feature of the area we're in. We run into the Bay of Morbihan on many of our excursions. The coastline is rugged - rocky outcroppings of granite along the coast carry at least a ways into the interior of this area.
9. Houses here are made of granite blocks or granite stones while the houses of Burgundy often used light colored limestone for their building materials. This gives towns a greyer cast than the limestone of Burgundy. Roofs here are more steeply pitched and tiled in black slate which again is different from the clay tiles of Burgundian houses.
10. There are a lot of similarities between medieval town and village life in Burgundy and Brittany. Wealthy & powerful dukes fortified the tops of hills, especially those with rocky outcroppings that made attack from that side more difficult. Trade was important and robust among towns as evidenced by their covered market spaces in the center of town. The turmoil of the middle ages required walls, moats, castles, and wars. But at the same time a growing middle class provided skilled labor within the towns as evidenced by the buildings that often hug the defensive walls of the castle.
11. Cell phones are ubiquitous here. Teenagers are gaming on steps on the corners of town. Adults all have them and are often talking on them when walking. No one uses cell phones in restaurants or cafés, especially when with friends or family.
12. Masking against Covid is hit or miss. I've seen some elderly wearing them on the streets, but most don't. Many wear them in stores like grocery stores. In some stores, clerks are masked,, but it is rare in restaurants or cafés. The French don't seem worried about being in crowds as evidenced by how packed the market was this morning at Vannes. But these are mostly outside with brief interactions even though very near each other. 78% of the French are fully vaccinated with 57 % having received a booster. Every store, restaurant, and office has multiple stations of hand sanitizer and I see people using them regularly. While I haven't talked to any French people about their Covid feelings, it seems that people are back to living life as normal, but willing to be prudent in personal safety.
13. The influence of the Catholic church on the lives of the French cannot be underestimated. Monasteries and abbeys contributed enormously to the sciences, especially agriculture, through their practices of self-reliance. They maintained libraries that held the known history of the world to that point in time. Every town has at least one church, some have several. Each of these churches enjoyed the benefit of faithful aristocrats who saw their way to heaven by giving to the church. The churches built wealth from these benefactors. Then came the wars of religion and the French Revolution which destroyed much of the wealth of the churches, in some cases destroying the buildings themselves.
14. The French eat fresh food, in season, which they buy at market as available. French bread must be eaten the same day it is bought (no preservatives) or it turns hard as a rock by the next morning. While grocery stores import fruits and vegetables from as far as the middle east, markets typically have foods from nearer to home. When shopping at the market, it is best to let the vendor pick out the fruit for you. For example, you tell the vendor that you want a melon to eat tonight or in two days and he/she picks out the one that will be perfectly ripe at the needed time.
15. We are truly blessed to have the opportunity to live in another culture. Besides the excellent food and wine that we splurge on, we learn that there are other ways of doing things, other priorities for spending time and money, and other ways to be family. Hopefully, we return each time a bit more caring and a bit more accepting of how others think and act.
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