France Travel » Coffee http://www.adaptinfrance.org Sun, 18 Dec 2011 13:26:44 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 A Guide To Enjoying Your Restaurant Experience In France http://www.adaptinfrance.org/a-guide-to-enjoying-your-restaurant-experience-in-france http://www.adaptinfrance.org/a-guide-to-enjoying-your-restaurant-experience-in-france#comments Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:42:14 +0000 admin http://www.adaptinfrance.org/?p=255 So you’re planning a trip to France and you’ve heard about all the restaurants there and you want to make sure that you get the most out of the experience. As a fluent French speaker who has spent quite a bit of time in France including several visits to restaurants in France, here are some tips about how you can make the most of your restaurant visit:

1. Plan ahead for your trip. Have a good idea of how much you are planning to spend and how long you plan to stay there. French restaurants can be quite pricey so it helps to know the price range of the restaurant before going there. You can find information about most restaurants either online or from a guidebook. The French also spend quite a bit more time eating than Americans and so you need to be sure to allow for enough time. It is not uncommon for a typical French three course meal to take three hours.

2. Be aware that if you are taking children at most restaurants the other patrons will have less tolerance for noise from them than you would find in America so it is crucial to train your children in advance of your restaurant visit. Dogs however are very much loved by the French and are welcome in most restaurants.

3. Before choosing a restaurant, if you are not familiar with French food you should look at the menu in advance. This is important because certain items of French food are quite different from American food and all French chefs take extreme pride in their cooking and in your enjoyment of it. Furthermore you will be expected to eat all of your food or you will be viewed as rude and if you do not enjoy your food you will have wasted time and money along with leaving a bad impression.

4. Study up on your French manners. The French eat their meals differently than Americans and it is important to be aware of the differences. For example, coffee is served only with dessert and they will not serve it to you before. Also you are expected to eat cheese with your dessert. The French also use their bread to clean their plate and they put their elbows on the table. These actions are completely normal and are not considered rude.

5. Learn enough French to understand the menu as well as some basic expressions. Although many waiters and chefs speak at least a little bit of English, they will greatly appreciate your efforts to learn their language and it will make it much easier for you to understand what you are ordering before it arrives at your table and you are surprised.

6. If you have never eaten in a restaurant in France before, you may want to consider making your first visit a trip to a cafe or a less formal restaurant rather than a formal one and work your way up.

Follow these tips and you will enjoy your French restaurant experience. Bon Appetite!

]]> http://www.adaptinfrance.org/a-guide-to-enjoying-your-restaurant-experience-in-france/feed 0 Learning French in France – Why It’s not Necessarily the Best Way to Learn French http://www.adaptinfrance.org/learning-french-in-france-why-its-not-necessarily-the-best-way-to-learn-french http://www.adaptinfrance.org/learning-french-in-france-why-its-not-necessarily-the-best-way-to-learn-french#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:47:07 +0000 admin http://www.adaptinfrance.org/learning-french-in-france-why-its-not-necessarily-the-best-way-to-learn-french Learning French in France is a great thing to do and I wouldn’t want to put you off it for a second. There is perhaps no better way to improve your French than to be surrounded by the language and the sights and sounds of French life.

Paris, for example, is a beautiful city and you can imagine the joys of a French lesson followed by a walk along the Rive Gauche of the Seine, stopping at a riverside café for a coffee or a glass of something and just watching the people go by – to my mind it’s a marvellous way to pass an hour or two. What about Nice or Cannes? Places rightly renowned for their style and glamour. “Immersion Learning” is one of the current buzz-words when learning French so what better way to immerse yourself than to go to France?

If that’s the case, you might ask, why on earth would I suggest that learning French in France might not be the best way?

Well if you’ve got deep pockets then I’d thoroughly recommend it. As I said there’s probably no better way to improve your French. But the important word there is “improve”. If you haven’t got deep pockets and you’re just starting with learning French, I’d have to say there are not only much cheaper ways to learn but ones which, given your situation, are actually better for you, easier and will help you learn French faster.

The drawback with learning French in France if you’re just starting out is the pressure you’re almost certainly going to put on yourself. Many of us learn French long after we’ve left school, and we’re not all together comfortable with going back into the classroom situation. OK, you’ll be surrounded by like-minded individuals and it’s going to be a bit different to when you were fifteen, but it’s still a classroom.

On top of that, you will have travelled a long way and paid a considerable amount of money to be amongst four, six or eight people you probably haven’t met before and who almost certainly all have different levels of French language skills. It can therefore be quite difficult for the teacher to give you adequate attention and you won’t be able to get the best out of it. The result is that you might well feel dissatisfied with your progress, you’ll put more pressure on yourself and end up trying to study outside of class time when you should be enjoying the many pleasures and beauties of France!

Now if you’re thinking of going to France on vacation, don’t let me put you off in the least. You’ll get on better if you can speak a few words of French, but if you’re in one of the larger towns or cities you can probably get by just fine with English. Go, you’ll have a great time!

But if you’re thinking of learning French in France – and I mean going there specifically to study the French language – I’ll offer a small piece of advice if I may, as someone who’s been there and done it. Before you invest a thousand dollars there, invest a few dollars – and I mean around $100 – in a good home study course which gives you computer-based exercises, interactive games, written texts and MP3s that you can listen to at your PC or copy to a player to carry around with you.

Do that first, get a bit of a grasp of the basics, then go to France. Trust me, you’ll be so much better prepared and you’ll enjoy the whole experience so much more. As I said at the start, learning French in France is a great thing to do – a little work before you go can make it the trip of a lifetime.




By: Dennis Cordy

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