20 things that will happen to you anyway.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Everyone arrives on the Côte d'Azur with a suitcase, a sunhat, and the quiet confidence of someone who has done their research. They have looked at the maps. They have learned a few words. They have read the reviews. None of this will help them.
What follows is the information they actually needed — the things no guidebook will tell you, the rules that are never written down, and the social contracts you will accidentally sign before you understand what you've agreed to.
Consider this your briefing. You're going to need it.
On the Côte d'Azur, a wide smile directed at someone you don't know reads less as "friendly" and more as "this person may need assistance." The French do not smile at strangers. This is not rudeness. This is efficiency. Save your smile for people you've been introduced to at least twice.
If the waiter is not coming to your table, be patient. Do not wave. Do not call out. Do not make eye contact in a pointed way. He will come and he will not appreciate being rushed and if he feels rushed something about your experience will subtly shift in a direction you won't be able to identify but will definitely feel. He will come. Wait.
When he does arrive, think carefully about what you want. If you think you might want two glasses of wine, order them now. Both of them. Right now. Because once you have been served you are no longer their problem and getting a second glass may require patience, strategy, and a level of eye contact negotiation that you are not yet equipped for. Order everything at once. Think ahead. You have one window and it is open right now.
Once your order is placed and your drinks have arrived, you are on your own. You have a table. You have wine. You are no longer their problem. This is not neglect. This is the highest form of service.
"Ça va?" means "how are you." Do not be fooled by this. It is not an invitation. It is not an opening. Nobody is asking how you are. Nobody has time for how you are. Nobody wants to know about your knee, your flight, your jet lag, your complicated feelings about the drive from the airport, or anything that has happened to you since you woke up this morning.
"Ça va?" is a greeting. It is the verbal equivalent of a nod. The correct and only answer is "Ça va" — said quickly, pleasantly, with no elaboration whatsoever — followed immediately by "et vous?" which throws it back to them, which they will also answer with "ça va," and then the exchange is over and everyone can move on with their lives.
If you answer honestly — if you actually begin to describe how you are — something will happen in the other person's eyes. Not rudeness. Not impatience. Something quieter than that. A small internal adjustment. A recalibration. They asked "ça va" and you are telling them about your knee. They will wait for you to finish. They will say "ah bon." And then they will say "ça va?" to someone else and mean it just as much as they meant it with you, which is to say not at all, which is fine, which is how this works.
Ça va. That's it. That's the whole thing.
In your French class, "comment" meant "how." As in comment allez-vous, as in a full grammatical construction with a verb attached. Fine. Correct. Useless in real life.
On the Côte d'Azur, "comment?" said alone, with a slight upward tilt and a look of mild offence, means "I beg your pardon?" It is what someone says when they didn't hear you, or when they heard you perfectly well and would like you to reconsider. You will instinctively respond by explaining how something works, in broken French, with hand gestures, while the other person waits patiently for you to finish before saying "comment?" again.
France runs on a schedule and the schedule is not negotiable. Lunch is at noon. Not 11h45, not 12h30 — noon. You will be seated, you will eat, and you will be finished and gone by two o'clock because the kitchen is closing whether you are done or not. The waiter will not say anything. He will simply begin to exist near your table in a way that communicates everything. You will feel it in your spine. You will ask for the bill. Do not leave your sunglasses, your phone, your book, your hat, or any personal item on the table while you do this — it will be cleared along with the bread basket, the butter, your dignity, and anything else that was in the general area. France is efficient at two o'clock. It does not sort.
Between two and seven thirty you are completely alone in this. Bring chips. Bring a cereal bar. Bring whatever sad little thing you stuffed in your bag that morning because you had a feeling. That feeling was correct. This is not a country that snacks between meals and if you are standing in front of a closed restaurant at five pm looking confused, every French person walking past knows exactly what happened and not one of them is surprised. You should have eaten more at lunch. You had the time. You had until two.
Dinner begins at seven thirty. The chef is not ready before then. The terrace is empty before then except for you and one confused British couple who also didn't know. Come back at eight. This is when France eats and France has absolutely no interest in adjusting this for you.
The forecast says 35 degrees. A sweater goes on. Pants too — long ones, reasonable ones, the kind you wear when it is only 35 degrees. You step outside. It is fine. You are fine. You ask someone how far it is to the coffee shop. Three kilometres they say. You nod. Three kilometres. You have absolutely no idea how far that is but it sounds like nothing. What even is a kilometre. It is probably close. You start walking.
At minute three the sweater comes off. At minute five you are carrying it because there is nowhere to put it and it is already damp and the sun is directly above you and this sun is not the sun from home — this sun is personal, this sun saw you coming, this sun has been here since before you were born and has absolutely no interest in your wellbeing. You cannot remove the pants. The pants are staying on. This is a public street. You made your choices this morning and now you are living inside them, in long pants, in 95 fahrenheit, on a road that does not appear to be ending. At minute ten the confidence is gone. At minute fifteen you stop, consider your life choices quietly, and check how far you have come. One kilometre. You have no idea what that means but it does not look like enough.
Strangers pass you on the street. They are not sweating. They have lived here their entire lives and they know that 35 celsius is 95 fahrenheit and that you do not go for a walk at noon in August in a sweater unless you are training for something, trying to lose weight quickly, or looking for a reason to spend the afternoon in a hospital which is at least air conditioned and would make for an interesting story back home.
You arrive forty-five minutes later, drenched, silent, and changed as a person, carrying a wet sweater like evidence of something that went very wrong. You order a coffee. You sit down. You do not move for a long time. Then it occurs to you that you have to go back.
You should have known this. You should have checked this before leaving home. Celsius, kilometres, grams — this information has been available your entire life. You chose not to look it up and you are now facing the return journey in wet pants under a personal sun that has not finished with you yet. Check these things before your vacation. We cannot stress this enough.
Back home a public toilet is a public service. You go in, you use it, you leave, nobody has exchanged anything. In France, particularly on the Côte d'Azur in summer, the toilet situation requires a strategy. Cafés and restaurants have toilets. They are for customers. If you walk in, head straight for the back, and attempt to use the facilities without ordering anything, the waiter will know. They always know. You will feel it before anyone says a word.
The solution is simple — order a coffee. A small one. Two euros, maybe three depending on where you are. Drink it fast or don't drink it at all, nobody is watching that closely. But order something. You have now paid for the toilet and can proceed with dignity. This is the system and it works perfectly once you understand that a two euro coffee is not a coffee — it is an access pass, a social contract, and frankly the best two euros you will spend all day.
In bigger cities you will occasionally find a paying public toilet on the street — a small booth, a coin slot, a leap of faith. Put your coin in. The door will open. What happens next is between you and the booth. It will close behind you. The timer is running. Do not think about this too much. Just go.
Have change with you at all times. Change — and yes, we mean the coins, not a fresh outfit. Although by the time you find yourself standing in front of a locked booth on a busy street in Nice, desperately checking every pocket while the situation becomes increasingly urgent, a change of outfit may also become relevant. The small round metal things. Have them ready. Not a card, not your phone, not a twenty euro note that nobody can break — coins, ready, accessible, in your hand before you need them. Do not wait until the last minute. Do not be optimistic. The toilet situation on the Côte d'Azur rewards the prepared and punishes everyone else in ways that are both immediate and unforgettable.
Where you come from, chips come in a variety of commitment levels. A small bag. A medium bag. A party bag for when you mean it. In France there is one size and that size is a declaration. You wanted a little snack, something for the road, something that fits in a pocket. What you will find is a bag large enough to feed a table of eight, a bag you will have to make a decision about, a bag that implies you are hosting something. You are not hosting something. You are standing in a supermarket at 5pm because lunch ended three hours ago and dinner doesn't exist yet and you are just a person who wanted a handful of chips. There is no handful option. There is only the big bag or nothing. You will buy the big bag. You will carry it under your arm like a small child through the streets of the Côte d'Azur. The French will look at you. You already know about the look. You were warned.
Alternatively you can do what France does and buy a baguette. A baguette is the correct portable snack. It costs almost nothing, it fits under your arm, and nobody looks at you strangely because everyone has one. However — and this is critical — do not sit down at a café or a restaurant and expect butter with your bread. There is no butter. There will never be butter. Bread arrives alone and it arrives that way on purpose. Asking for butter will earn you a look that suggests you have asked for something deeply unreasonable, possibly illegal. The bread is the thing. The bread is enough. If you need butter with your bread bring it from home, carry it in your bag, keep it about your person at all times, and do not make eye contact when you reach for it.
Where you come from drinks happen after something — after work, after the week, at the end of a day, after a reason. Here no reason is required and the schedule is already set. Apéro at eleven because lunch is coming and you need to ease into it properly. Wine with lunch because lunch is a meal that deserves respect. Apéro again at four because the sun is still out and dinner isn't until eight thirty and that gap needs filling and it will be filled with a glass of rosé and some olives and that is final. Nobody is celebrating anything. Nobody is having a moment. This is just how the day is structured and it has been working perfectly well for centuries so don't overthink it. Nobody will judge you.
You will adjust to this schedule faster than you expect and significantly faster than you will admit to people back home. However, and this is important — life changing, even. If someone invites you for apéro and you ask for anything without alcohol — water, juice, a tisane, a sparkling water with a slice of lemon, anything that is not a proper drink — understand what you have done. You have not made a dietary choice. You have made a statement. The statement is that you think you are better than everyone in that room, better than their wine, better than their tradition. Your host will smile and say nothing. They will all start to ignore you and the news will travel. By that evening the neighbours will know. By the next morning the village will know. By Tuesday people who have never met you will have a fully formed opinion about you and that opinion is that you think you are better than them. The woman at the boulangerie will not save you a baguette. The plumber you called last week will remember something urgent he has to do instead. Forever. You will have no friends. You will receive no services. You will be known simply as the one who thinks they are better than everyone else, and this is a title that does not expire.
Take the glass. Drink it. Because the moment you accept that glass every single person in the room will turn around and watch you. They will go quiet. They will wait. And when the glass reaches your lips there will be a small cheer, someone will say something incomprehensible, glasses will be raised in your direction, and just like that you are in. You are one of them. You exist. It costs you nothing. Refusing it costs you everything — your friends, your baguette, your plumber, your tomatoes, your reputation, and you will have to move.
Take the damn glass. Don't be a snob.
Going uphill you have priority. The car coming down must reverse and find a passing point. This is the law. Remember this because it is the only moment of power you will ever have on these roads and it will last approximately four seconds.
If you are going down and someone is coming up — move. Move now. Move immediately. Do not think, do not assess, do not check your mirrors with the calm methodical approach you learned in driving school because that person coming up the hill has priority, they know they have priority, and they have absolutely no intention of slowing down to give you time to figure this out. You have about three seconds before they are in your front seat. Reverse. Reverse fast. Reverse with a confidence you do not possess into a space you cannot fully see around a bend you did not know existed while a drop of approximately four hundred metres opens up on your left side that you are absolutely not going to look at. Find the passing point. Find it faster. The car coming up is still coming. They are not slowing down. They were never going to slow down. This is their mountain.
However. If the car coming down is a senior citizen, none of this applies. They will not move for anyone. Not for you, not for the law, not for the concept of priority, not for physics. You will reverse one kilometre up a serpentine road in first gear while they follow behind at walking pace, lights on, completely at peace, as though escorting you personally back to wherever you came from. Which, in a way, they are.
Then you will go back to the main road. You will never take a shortcut again. This is a promise you will keep.
You spent thirty years speaking French. Your parents spoke French. Your school was French. You arrive on the Côte d'Azur, open your mouth with full confidence, and watch a local's face do something that can only be described as a controlled emergency. They understood perhaps twenty-five words. Possibly fewer. They are nodding slowly in the way people nod when they have absolutely no intention of admitting what just happened. You, meanwhile, caught maybe three words of their response — bonjour, voilà, and something that might have been fromage — and are nodding back with equal conviction. Two people. Nodding. Understanding nothing. Both absolutely certain the other one is following.
Then they will ask if you know Céline Dion personally. Then they will ask if you eat a lot of caribou. You will explain, patiently, that caribou live in the Arctic and that Québec is a large modern city with excellent restaurants and no roaming wildlife. They will nod. The next person will ask the same thing. You will explain again, still patiently, still smiling. The third person will ask. You will explain. The fourth person will ask. Something behind your eyes will change. By the fifth person you will simply say yes. Yes you know Céline Dion. Yes you eat caribou every day. You had some this morning. It was delicious. Everyone accepts this and moves on and honestly it's going much better now.
And if at some point during your two weeks on the Côte d'Azur you feel the need to express yourself in Québécois — and you will — do not say tabarnac. They know that one. Everyone knows that one. It has lost its element of surprise. Say esti. They won't see it coming. Neither will you, frankly, but by that point nobody is pretending anymore and it will feel like a breakthrough.
Not metaphorically. Literally. The bakery is closed. The pharmacy is closed. The butcher, the bank, the hardware store, the little épicerie you were counting on — all closed. The streets are empty. A cat crosses the road. Nothing else moves. You will stand in the middle of what was yesterday a perfectly functioning village and wonder if you missed an announcement. You did not miss an announcement. This is just Sunday. Do not be alarmed. You are not in a Stephen King novel. Nobody has left. They are all inside, having lunch, and they will reappear tomorrow morning as though none of this happened.
Bigger cities are more forgiving — some supermarkets open on Sunday mornings, a few boulangeries take turns staying open on rotation. But in a village? Plan ahead. Buy everything you need on Saturday. Buy more than you think you need. Buy things you don't need just in case.
And if you had a lovely idea about taking your loved ones out for a nice Sunday dinner — a little treat, a moment, something to remember — you should have thought about this yesterday. The restaurant you had in mind is closed. The other one is also closed. The one that sometimes stays open on Sundays is closed today for reasons that will never be explained. You will drive around for forty-five minutes with increasingly hungry people in your car, past closed door after closed door, until someone suggests going home and eating whatever is left in the fridge. This is the Sunday dinner. The fridge is the restaurant. You should have thought of this on Saturday.
In France the pharmacy is not a place you go as a last resort. It is a first resort. It is the first resort. Before the doctor, before the internet, before calling your mother — the pharmacy. French people walk in with a symptom and walk out with a solution and the whole transaction takes four minutes and costs almost nothing and this is just how healthcare works here and it is extraordinary.
Describe your symptoms. All of them. The pharmacist will listen with the focused attention of someone who has chosen this profession specifically for this moment. They will ask questions. They will nod. They will disappear behind a shelf and return with a small white bag containing several boxes of things you have never heard of, in dosages you don't quite understand, with instructions that are entirely in French. Take this three times a day. This one before meals. This one only if the first one doesn't work. This one is for the side effects of the second one.
It will cost you eight euros. You will be cured by Thursday.
The pharmacist will also tell you if your symptom is serious enough to see a doctor. They will recommend a specialist if needed. They will have an opinion on your diet, your sleep, your stress levels, and the way you are holding your shoulders right now. They did not ask about your shoulders. They noticed. They are professionals.
However. The French pharmacy is also a beauty shop, a skincare boutique, a perfume counter, and a hair care destination. There will be serums. There will be shampoos. There will be a face cream that costs sixty euros and a display of fragrances you did not come in for. You came in for something for your headache. You will leave with the headache remedy, a conditioner your pharmacist mentioned almost in passing, a hand cream that was next to the conditioner, and a small perfume that was on promotion and seemed reasonable at the time. This is normal. This happens to everyone. Budget accordingly.
Your neighbour stops you at the gate. There was apparently an incident last week, just down the road, a car, a bend, and the Dupont boy who was driving too fast, and the wall that had been weakened the previous winter, and the gendarmes arrived but by then the — voilà. She picks up her shopping bags.
You are standing there with your mouth open. By then the what? The gendarmes found what? Is the Dupont boy alive? Is the wall alive? Was there fire? There was clearly fire, something in the way she said affaibli suggested fire — was there fire? She is already walking away. The voilà has been issued. The story is over. You will lie awake that night assembling theories. You will look at the bend every time you drive past it. You will never ask because you already know what you'll get. Voilà.
They will help. They will help with enormous enthusiasm. There was a roundabout, you see, before they redid the road in 2019, and you turn left where the pharmacy used to be except it's a kebab shop now, and then you follow the road until you reach the house with the blue shutters belonging to the Martineau family, the father had that business with the boats you may have heard about, and then you continue straight until the junction where Michel had his — voilà. They are already walking away. You are standing on the pavement holding a hand-drawn map on a supermarket receipt that ends at a comma. Michel had his what at the junction? An accident? A revelation? A sandwich? You will never know and more importantly you will never find your restaurant. Download Google Maps. Download it offline. Do it before you leave home.
We know you're being friendly. We know where you come from, "we should grab dinner sometime" is just something mouths say, like "we should catch up" or "let's do lunch" — sounds that fill the air and evaporate harmlessly by morning. Do not bring those sounds to France. Here they land. Here they stick. Here they become a reservation, a table for six, and your financial ruin.
The moment "we should all go to dinner together" leaves your body, you have paid. You just don't know it yet. They know. The waiter knows. The chef knows. Everyone in the restaurant knows except you, still cheerfully reading the menu, still thinking this is a fun group outing. It is not a group outing. It is your outing. All of it. The wine, the second wine, the cheese course, the desserts, the digestif, the second digestif ordered by a man you have met exactly once who turns out to have very specific opinions about Armagnac.
When the bill arrives nobody will move. Nobody will flinch. They will be mid-sentence and they will stay there, warm and unhurried, until you have sorted it. Keep your invitations inside your body. Every single one of them.
Pas mal from a French person about your French is the equivalent of a standing ovation anywhere else. They will not say "excellent" or "wow, you're so fluent." They will say pas mal with a small nod, possibly while already looking at something else. Frame it. Put it on the wall. You earned it.
You arrive. You extend your hand. It is a confident hand. A friendly hand. A hand that has shaken many hands and done it well. It will hang there in the air for a fraction of a second while the French person processes what they're looking at, and then they will kiss you anyway, around the hand, ignoring it completely, as though it is a small architectural feature they've decided to work with.
Two kisses, sometimes three, sometimes four — it depends on the region, the family, the phase of the moon, something — and you will not know how many until it's over. And then you will do it all again when you leave. Both directions. Every person in the room. Do not attempt to lead. Do not pull back too soon. Do not extend the hand again — you know better now — just lean in, stay humble, and wait to be released.
Then put your coat on slowly because you have four more people to get through before you reach the door.
Before you panic about the language, know this — the French have spent decades stealing English words, giving them a French accent, and passing them off as their own. This is your secret weapon. Le week-end is the weekend. Le parking is parking. Le camping is camping. Le shopping is shopping. Le match is the match. Le sandwich is the sandwich. Le selfie is the selfie. You already know all of this. You have been speaking French for years without realising it. You are more prepared than you thought.
Now the bad news. Some words that sound English are not English at all. The French invented them, gave them an English accent, and released them into the wild with no warning. Le footing is jogging — not feet, not walking, nothing to do with feet. Le brushing is a blow dry — not a brush, not brushing anything. Le pressing is the dry cleaner — not pressing charges, not pressing anything you'd recognise. Le relooking is a makeover. Le caravaning is camping in a caravan. These words do not exist in English. They never did. The French made them up and they are very comfortable with this decision.
And then there is le smoking. Le smoking is a tuxedo. It is not a cigarette, not an activity, not a lifestyle, and it is absolutely not a compliment about your appearance. If someone tells you the dress code is "smoking" do not arrive in jeans with a cigarette hanging out of your mouth thinking you nailed it — and do not take it as a sign that people find you attractive. You did not nail it. Nobody said that. Put on a bow tie. Leave the jeans at home. You were warned.
If you are reading this before your trip — welcome. You are going to be fine. You know about the kilometres, the apéro, the Sunday, the credit card bill. You are prepared. You are practically local already. Go and enjoy every single moment of it.
If you are reading this after — ah. Well. You walked three kilometres in a sweater and long pants in 95 fahrenheit and arrived somewhere looking like you swam there. You reversed one kilometre up a serpentine mountain road in first gear while a senior citizen followed you without blinking. You said "we should all go to dinner" out loud in front of witnesses and paid for the whole table including the digestif of a man you had met exactly once who had very specific opinions about Armagnac. You asked for water at an apéro and wondered why the boulangerie seemed cold toward you for the rest of the week. You had a little mishap finding a toilet at the wrong moment with the wrong amount of change in your pocket. You are still lying awake wondering what happened to the Dupont boy and whether there was fire. You have a credit card bill sitting on your kitchen table that you have been walking past for three days without opening.
Now go find the bottle of wine you brought back — the good one, the one you should have bought at the duty free where the wine is excellent and considerably cheaper and which you walked past in a hurry because you had a flight to catch and now you wish you hadn't. Pour yourself a large glass. Get the tissues. Sit down somewhere comfortable. Did you check the currency exchange before you left? Did you know that on the Côte d'Azur you are not just paying for the coffee — you are paying for the view, the beautiful terrace, the toilet you used in the restaurant, the sound of the sea. Every single one of those things was on the bill. You just didn't see the line items. And the tourist menu — you had the tourist menu every single time, didn't you. You sat down with your sunhat and your camera and your slightly uncertain expression and they knew immediately and you thought everything was so reasonable and it was, in euros, which are not dollars, which you did not check.
Now open your credit card bill. Pour another glass first. Reality comes back but I'm sure you have great stories to tell.
You should have read my tips before your trip. Not after. Sherlock.
You were warned. You are welcome.
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