From a first experience on a night train to discovering an island in the south of France – this week’s La Belle Vie newsletter offers an essential starting point for eating, talking, drinking, and living like a local.
Hello readers,
Last week, I took a night train for the first time. Departure was in Paris at the Gare d’Austerlitz and my first stop was Toulon in the south of France.
The cabin I booked was for six people, with three bunks stacked on top of one another on each side. I was happy to be on the bottom bunk as the ladder leading to the top looked a little hard to get down from in a moving train. You are provided with a travel kit including earplugs, an eye mask, a face wipe, as well as a pillow and blanket.
Now, if you want, you can book a first-class ticket where you can stay in cabins with only four beds. There are also carriages for women only.
Full steam ahead for revived Paris-Berlin night train
There’s something quite particular about going to sleep in one place and waking up in the other. Once I got to Toulon, I took another train to Hyères, a French town on the Mediterranean coast.
When I arrived, it was only around 8am, so most shops were still closed and the streets were fairly empty. However, I did come across a small café. To my surprise, it was quite busy, mainly with older men reading newspapers or playing cards. It was obvious they were regulars, as they spoke to the waitress with a familiar ease. She knew each customer’s usual order and would simply call out their names for them to collect their drinks at the counter.
As I sipped my coffee, I enjoyed listening to them speak in their strong southern French accents. They reminded me of characters from the works of the French novelist Marcel Pagnol, whose stories are often set in the south of France. I truly believe that if you want to experience everyday French life, spending time in local cafés is one of the best ways to do so.
Analysis: Why does France have so many cafés?
But my journey didn’t end at the small café, I then hopped on a bus for about an hour and finally arrived at the sea. The sun was shining, and after a week of rain in Paris, it was truly starting to feel like a vacation. I then got on a boat for 20 minutes to the island of Porquerolles.
Porquerolles is the largest of the Hyères Islands off the Mediterranean coast, known for its turquoise water and protected natural landscapes. In fact, only 350 people are living on the island, and there’s only a small city centre at the port. The rest of the island is a protected reserve with different hiking paths and access to beaches.
A few years ago, around 8,000 people would visit the island during the peak summer season, but visitor numbers are now regulated, with ONLY a max of 4,000 people allowed on the island per day in the summer.
The place I ended up staying at even had an outdoor space dedicated to pétanque – the goal is simple: players try to throw their balls as close as possible to a small wooden target ball called the cochonnet (piglet).
10 things you probably didn’t know about Pétanque
Between the sun shining on the clear blue water, people playing pétanque, I could not feel more away from home. With the night train adventure, it really didn’t feel like I had travelled so far.
The next few days consisted of hiking around the island, lounging in the sun, and even taking a quick swim in the Mediterranean, the water’s temperature being 16C – a total dépaysement as the French would say.
French Word of the Day: Dépaysement
There was only one negative thing about this great weekend by the sea: mosquitoes. Now, one might say that it was foolish of me not to be prepared for such a thing, but in my defence, I have not spent a lot of time in the South of France.
I’ve been very lucky to spend many of my summers on the coast of Brittany, where the winds are strong and the temperatures cool enough to keep mosquitoes away. Since I was heading to the beach, it never even crossed my mind that there might be any of those tiny, annoying insects around.
Oh well – lesson learned. I ended up with a few bites, which I’ll just consider little souvenirs from my time in the south.
