Dear cipto,
The first thing you have to decide when you want to go abroad and you live in the UK is your mode of transport. After that, if it's going to be a long journey, you really ought to know where you are going to spend your first night.
You can of course fly across the Channel, go through the tunnel under the Channel or do what we always do and use the ferry to cross the Channel. It only takes about an hour and then you drive cautiously down the ramp from the boat on to French soil. This first bit is the tricky part as you have to think right, cross roundabouts from the right and remember to give way to traffic on the left. But it doesn't take long to get used to that, especially as the roads in France are very wide and well maintained. A two hour drive on the motorway brought us to our first stop for the night at a hotel on our way down to the east part of France, called Alsace.
The receptionist was what you could call a mountain of a man, who clearly enjoyed his food and seemed genuinely pleased to welcome us as he insisted on speaking English interspersed with loud and raucous outbursts of laughter. He was equally jolly the following morning at breakfast explaining the intricacies of the device in which you boiled your egg. In fact he seemed to see the funny side of everything. As always with this type of buffet breakfast you are up and down fetching the different ingredients for your 'petit dejeuner'.
The only problem with this particular breakfast was the background noise, not from the other guests, the traffic outside but from the young dynamic cleaner who clearly thought that everyone had finished breakfast and she could start vacuuming the dining floor replacing the chairs and tables with as much zest and enthusiasm as she could manage.
The result was like something from a scene from one of the noisier acts in an opera by Wagner. We thought it would be undiplomatic to complain on our first day and decided to adopt the policy of our jolly giant at reception and treat the whole thing as a bit of a laugh.
There are of course plenty of other meals you can take but it seemed a good idea to start with breakfast. After all we use the word 'breakfast' because it literally means that you break your fast as you don't eat (you fast) during the night.
Dear cipto, you can share your comments and questions on this piece on the forum here: Going French, Part II
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