As vacations go, this was the longest in many years – a bit over three weeks. It was a variation on my nearly annual sailing charter with two of my brothers. Those trips are usually a week and are somewhere in the U.S.
But this trip was different. It involved two weeks in the Dordogne area, where one of my brothers has a house, a week sailing in La Rochelle, and three days of getting re-acquainted with Paris. I came away thinking that while Paris is expensive for most of the humans on this planet, a retirement in the less urban parts of France could be a great and affordable mix of civilization, good living and down-home comfort.
Cash is seldom needed in France
If you haven’t been to France recently, you should know that it isn’t very useful to change dollars into euros stateside. Nor is it a good idea to do it at the airport. Bring a debit card from an institution that covers ATM charges from wherever you get your euros. You can find a list of good cards for currency exchange on www.nerdwallet.com.
Another thing we found: Regular cabs are generally less expensive than Uber. And cabstands are everywhere in Paris.
The French train system is still great, provided you can forgive them for having eliminated old-fashioned dining cars with tablecloth service. Our train from Gare Austerlitz in Paris to Souillac, a medieval city in the Dordogne area, took less than six hours. The bullet train from La Rochelle to Paris was even faster – less than three hours.
So you don’t have to brave Paris traffic in a rental car, an act I consider suicidal. In Paris, you take cabs or the metro.
Otherwise, you take a train to the area you want to visit. From there you can become a pedestrian for your stay. Or you can rent a car to explore Sarlot and other places in the Dordogne area, or drive a bit farther to a multitude of vineyards or other medieval cities like Domme.
You’ll like it, wherever you go
Either way, La Rochelle or the Dordogne area, you’ll be pleased. The wine is lovely, the food is sensational, the beauty ubiquitous. And the open-air markets will charm you. La Rochelle is young, a maritime city with a multitude of university students. The Dordogne area is relatively old, with grey the most common hair color – but often seen on a group of cyclists in the countryside.
In both places I found it difficult to think of France as the economically struggling, largely socialist nation it is often described as in news reports. In La Rochelle, for instance, our chartered boat was the “Papillon,” a 43-foot Beneteau sloop. It sat quietly on dock 57 as flags fluttered in the brisk wind.
That’s a good-sized boat by most standards, offering four staterooms and two heads. But up and down the docks, we saw a multitude of boats at least this size. And many were larger. Some were much larger. Together, the entire horizon is filled with sailing yacht masts. That’s some indication that more than a few people live quite well in France.
Indeed, there’s a lot here that I wish we could see at home.
Let’s start with simple stuff, like having a real lunch hour (and then some) where people stop working, gather, and spend a relaxed time in conversation, an experience that compares quite favorably to, say, buying a stale sandwich from a machine and eating it at your desk.
And how about that annual month of vacation in France? Paid vacation days in the U.S. are limited and many workers fear taking them. In France, no problem, starting with the annual month off.
Both real lunch hours and genuine vacations, along with guaranteed health care, may have something to do with another very nice thing. The French live longer than we do, a lot longer.
Forty years ago, U.S. life expectancy at birth was similar to that in most industrial countries. But today, according to the CIA World Factbook, the French rank 17th in the world and enjoy a life expectancy at birth of 81.9 years. Our nation, in contrast, ranks 43rd in the world at 80 years. The difference in how long you’re likely to live is nearly two years.
Worse, the CIA figures may be off. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, Americans now have a life expectancy of 78.6 years, having declined in each of the last three years.
Living longer: Priceless
That leaves us with a question: How do you price something that’s truly priceless?
What would you pay to know you might live, and enjoy, an additional two or three years?
Related columns:
Scott Burns, “Letter from France: How about retiring here,” 10/02/2015 https://scottburns.com/letter-from-france/
Sources and References:
Wikipedia data:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domme,_Dordogne
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Souillac,_Lot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarlat-la-Canéda
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Rochelle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dordogne
French train information:
https://www.raileurope.com/train-tickets/journeys/article/paris-la-rochelle
https://www.virail.com/train-paris-souillac
C.I.A. World Factbook, Rank order list of life expectancy https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html
Lenny Bernstein, “U.S. life expectancy declines again, a dismal trend not seen since World War I,” Washington Post, 11/28/2018 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-life-expectancy-declines-again-a-dismal-trend-not-seen-since-world-war-i/2018/11/28/ae58bc8c-f28c-11e8-bc79-68604ed88993_story.html
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Photo: Scottt Burns, Sunset in La Rochelle 2019
(c) Scott Burns, 2019