Traveling in France: Navigating Cultural Differences
A street market in Aix-en-Provence, France. August 17, 2019.
Every country has a few quirky cultural surprises that visitors hadn’t known to expect. And in cases where people have invested in a trip to a foreign locale, these surprises—even the most minor—aren’t particularly welcomed.
Though people may assume that they’ll encounter cultural differences in places they consider vastly unlike their home countries, such as Americans visiting China or Japanese people visiting Africa, for example, people often underestimate or completely misinterpret the differences they’ll encounter when they visit a country that they see as “similar enough” to their own—such as someone from another western country visiting France.
Most people will know the broad strokes of what to expect on a trip to France, yet a few of the more subtle cultural differences could come as a surprise. In expecting them—and reducing the “surprise” factor—you’ll have a much better French travel experience.
To help ease your French vacation, I’ve compiled four categories of “French travel surprises,” all of which tie to often-unexpected cultural differences.
Meals Happen at Designated Times—and Take a While
You can visit grocery stores, patisseries and bakeries, and markets for delicious sandwiches, fruit, and snacks at almost any time between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. in France.
However, if you want a sit-down meal in a proper restaurant (i.e., with servers) that doesn’t cater almost exclusively to tourists, you need to eat breakfast at what counts as breakfast time in France, lunch at lunchtime, and dinner at dinnertime.
In other words, do not expect a restaurant-experience breakfast at 10:30 a.m., lunch at 2 p.m., or dinner at 5 p.m. at a quality French establishment.
In general, assume that you will need to plan to start breakfast between 8-10 a.m., lunch between 12-2 p.m., and dinner between 7-10 p.m. (I say “start” because you can begin and not be finished by the end of the meal service—but you cannot arrive after the meal service has finished and expect to get a seat.)
Restaurants in Colmar, France, empty ahead of the dinner service to come. August 9, 2019.
Further, the French don’t dine in a restaurant once a day or several times a week—and certainly not several times a day. Even when they don’t eat a meal at home, they’ll likely grab a quick snack somewhere or a sandwich or pastry from a boulangerie or patisserie—not sit down for a full meal at a restaurant.
For this reason, restaurant dining in France has a different level of importance and ritual than it does in many other countries (especially in the United States). Even the most informal restaurant assumes that if you plan to eat a sit-down meal, you have decided to treat yourself and, therefore, would like the full restaurant experience.
Assume that a sit-down meal at a French restaurant will take at least two hours and involve multiple courses. If you want “fast casual” dining in a restaurant, you need to go back to the United States. If you need something to eat and don’t want to spend two hours, do as the French do and pop into a bakery for a sandwich or a salad to go.
Read my article dedicated to the topic for more specific guidance on how to have a good restaurant experience in France.
Operating Hours Differ
In France, few places stay open continually from early in the morning until late at night without a pause in operating hours. Further, few places have opening hours all seven days of the week.
This includes stores and shops and it includes museums and other major tourist sites as well. For example, during our travels through the châteaux in the French Loire Valley, many castles closed for the lunch break.
A friend of mine on Twitter, when I asked my followers for their surprises about traveling in France, had this same surprise. “If the closing time was 6 p.m., that shop would shut at 5:45 and most things closed on a Sunday. Working a 9 to 5 job with a commute means you never see an open shop during the week.”
Fortunately, French establishments tend to have common closing periods. Knowing them can help you avoid an unpleasant surprise:
Though the exact time of the lunch break varies a bit, you can assume that if an establishment takes a midday pause, it will do so between 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m.
In addition, many stores, establishments, and sites will close around 6 or 7 p.m. on opening days.
Also, you should expect that most places will not have opening hours on Sundays in France—including many tourist hotspots—and that many establishments will close for an additional day of the week or have one day during which they operate only in the morning or in the afternoon.
Reservations Matter in France
Don’t expect to walk into most eating establishments or even tourist sites without a reservation in France and walk out satisfied with your experience.
Most restaurants in France will only seat people who have reservations, unless they have a tourist-centered target audience.
If this seems overly fussy or formal to you, consider it from a different perspective:
Many French restaurants only have two seatings for the dinner service, one seating for the lunch service, and one or two seatings for breakfast—and most restaurants in France do not serve all three meals. (Most U.S.-based readers with any knowledge of the restaurant industry in their countries will find this number of table turns shockingly low.)
Due to the low number of table turns and the importance restaurant dining has in the French culture, chefs aim to buy high-quality, fresh ingredients—and only in the quantities needed to serve the number of people eating that day.
You can find the occasional reservations-required exception in a casual French café, but we’ve even encountered shops one level up from a boulangerie offering sandwiches to go that have turned us away for lack of reservations.
Therefore, make no assumptions that you’ll get to eat anywhere without your name next to a specific seating time on the restaurant’s list.
Further, many historical sites and museums require or request that visitors reserve a time slot on a specific day in advance of their visit. Though you can often get into places if you just show up, you may need to wait in a long line—and you may simply get turned away.
Want to see Paris from atop the Eiffel Tower? (Of course you do!) Then you’d better make a reservation in advance. June 16, 2017.
Tourist-site reservations help to guarantee that you see what you really want to see while you’re in France, they reduce the amount of time you spend waiting in lines, and they provide a better, less crowded visiting experience inside the museum or site.
Though you may miss spontaneity, if you prefer off-the-cuff, choose-as-you-go travel, you’ll find plenty of worthwhile trade-offs in the French reservation rule. (Who can complain about fresh, carefully prepared food and a less crowded tourist site?)
French Politesse is Real (and Really Important)
People stereotype the French as rude.
In complete honesty, I’ve never encountered rude people in France. Another Twitter connection said she didn’t during her visit, either: “We found the people to be far nicer than the stereotypes we'd always heard about snobbery and rudeness.”
Yet many people swear to me that they’ve experienced French rudeness first-hand. And I have no reason to believe they’d lie.
However, I’ve grown to see the stereotype of the rude French as a nearly comical cultural misunderstanding on both sides.
What I mean: The French find most foreigners’ behavior rude by their standards. Therefore, in getting approached in what they consider a highly rude fashion, they respond in a manner that reflects the rudeness they see coming from the other side. (As frankly, you probably would as well.)
If you plan to visit France and want to have a positive experience with the French, you must understand that the French take what they call “politesse” very seriously.
Politesse, to the French, refers to what they consider manners in interpersonal situations. The French adore politesse. Politesse is essential and it is a part of every aspect of French life.
(For example, I’ve often joked that it takes forever for a French person to get to the point in a letter or e-mail, as they spend sentences—if not paragraphs—wishing me and my family and my friends and my pets and my work and my health all kinds of good things before I find something concrete and actionable in the missive. I’ve found this true even in simple letters from the utility company telling me that someone will come to check the meter next week.)
No one expects a foreigner to go on and on in French for a simple interaction—as might the French, to be honest—yet they do find it abrupt and shocking for someone to walk up to them and ask a question or make a request without a polite hello and, where appropriate, an introduction.
If you think about it a moment, though we do it often in the United States without a second thought, abruptly asking someone else on the sidewalk for the time or directions without saying hello and excuse me is, well, rude.
If you do this and get a nasty response—or no response whatsoever—you earned the reaction.
Therefore, recall even the most superficial layer of your school-days manners and you’ll get a warm response from the French in return.
A few tips to help you along:
When you enter a store, say “bonjour” (hello) to the people working there. When you have something to ask a stranger on the street, use your bonjour and add “excusez-moi” (excuse me) before you launch into your question.
When you want to order from a server at a restaurant or buy something at a shop, always start with hello (bonjour). (Reminder: If you’ve taken a reservation at a restaurant, you’ve entered a space where you’ve given implicit agreement to stay for a while and enjoy an experience. Rushing the waiter or telling him that he needs to hurry “because you’re in a rush” will not be welcomed.)
If you then add a “s'il vous plait” to the end of your order—a polite way to say “please”—and say “au revoir” (goodbye) when you leave—you’ll truly come off well.
Even at the boulangerie, manners matter. Don’t forget to greet the baker (bonjour) when you walk in, request your item politely (s'il vous plait), thank him for his help (merci), and say goodbye (au revoir). Aix-en-Provence, France. August 17, 2019.
Again, you don’t have to do a ton to make yourself palatable to the French and get fantastic French customer service. (Really and truly, I have never received better service in stores and restaurants than I have received in France—they consider shopkeeping and restauration true métiers.)
A final note: Your own preferences for good service aside, do remember that you have arrived as a visitor to their country. Act like a guest and make nice.
Simple Planning Goes a Long Way
In all these cases, a little planning goes a long way in giving you a better travel experience in France—and with fewer unpleasant surprises.
When it comes to politesse, simply buy a phrasebook before your trip, learn how to say “hello,” “please,” and “thank you” in French, and use these words habitually at the appropriate times. (A few other common phrases won’t hurt you, either, and the French will love you for trying.)
When it comes to food, opening hours, and reservations, you will need to plan ahead to structure your days before they begin to ensure you see what you’d like to see with enough time to see them.
Yes, you can get into that château at 10 a.m., but if it closes for lunch at 11:30, will you have enough time to see it all without feeling rushed? Wouldn’t you prefer to have a ticket granting you access at 9:30 a.m. instead, for safety’s sake?
And though you can have a lovely picnic lunch in the parks all over France, if you would like a proper sit-down break at a restaurant, you’d better plan your day accordingly when it comes to timing your activities and making your reservations in advance.
If you’ve discovered other hidden best practices for visiting France and having a wonderful experience, share!