France with Khem

Khem was just in France for a whole month. He spent five days in Paris, then rented a car and did Normandy, the Loire valley, Burgundy, Nice and the South of France, Chamonix and back to Paris for another four days. I got a chance to catch up with him and ask about his trip.


"Normany was wild. All the World War Two beaches," shared Khem, "you could see all the bunkers, and you could see how the Germans were fortified in there. Everything is so old there, buildings that took hundreds of years to build. You could feel the history, we don't have anything like that in Canada."

"My favourite places were Normandy and the French Riviera. We stayed in Nice and jotted out to the surrounding cities for half a day each. Nice is right in the middle," shared Khem. "I also went up Mont Blanc, the highest point I've ever been up. It's about 14,000 feet. It took three gondolas to get up there and it was very cool. You can tell in the winter time that the runs are spectacular, it was just a glacier while I was there."

Khem also said that there are runs marked for the three countries that Mont Blanc sits on, and you can cross over them whenever. "There's a run for Italy, France and Switzerland," said Khem, "it was pretty cool." Looks like a bucket list trip to me!

"All of France was great, especially some of the architecture," shared Khem, "The Palace of Versailles was wonderful, as was the Notre Dam Cathedral."

"Something I noticed was how nice the French people are," noted Khem, "I was surprised because of the preceeding reputation, but I was proved wrong. Everyone was nice, in all parts of the country. They gave advice, accurate information, and were very helpful."

Another surprising thing was the road tolls for Khem! "No one told me about the tolls," laughed Khem, "You could have gotten around the toll roads using different routes but it would have taken much longer. Going around the whole country, you can imagine it adds up. the tolling process didn't have much rhyme or reason to it, and cost us around 500 EU."

"The food - it was incredible," shared Khem, "and the wine. Plus the entertainment scene in Paris was unreal. We went out during a jazz night, and there was this incredible band - like nothing we have here - and it was free."

Any other tips for our readers?

"When we first checked in to the Westin, I was tipping north american standard. I left 15/20% everywhere," shared Khem, "they were treating me like royalty. Turns out, while they like tips, but they don't rely on tips like a lot of our servers do. I found the standard was 5% max for tipping. I definitely felt like royalty for the first week and then I was clued in."

We'd like to thank Khem for sharing his experience with us!