Travel Advice for France and Europe

French Holidays in the AudeDOMAINE DE CAZES with Panoramic Views across the valley to the Pyrenees

Travel Advice
PLEASE NOTE THAT 2021 MAY HAVE MORE RESTRICTIONS DUE TO COVID, SO PLEASE CHECK FOR UP-TO-DATE INFORMATION

This section on travel advice has been provided to give you some practical and useful travel information for your French Holidays in the South of France. It contains up to date information and traveller advice for your French Holidays in Aude specifically and Occitaine (Languedoc-Rousillon) generally, it pays to know what your travel requirements are before leaving home.

In this section you'll find information and tips about what you need to do before setting off on holiday, how to get to Occitaine how to find stop-over hotels and ferries, how to travel by car, train or air with lists of all the budget airlines that service Occitaine. There are useful hints on topics such as driving in France and in particular advice on what car equipment you must have with you when driving in France. There is advice on travel insurance, where to find out what the weather is doing in the Occitaine region and regional information about the departments that make up Occitaine. All in all a comprehensive and useful source of French travel advice.

Travel Check List
This travel check list is intended to be a minimum requirements list for your travel visit to France and is by no means exhaustive. There will be items specific to your needs that may not be included so take some time to stop and think about what you need to take, personal medication is a good example and raises the point of making sure that you carry your medication in the original packaging and if possible with a copy of your prescription so that you can prove what the medication is and that its for your personal use.

Currency Exchange
It is worth thinking about how much money you are going to need on your vacation. Ferry ports and airports offer you currency exchange services as do the banks, but not always at the best rates. So it is well worth planning what you are going to need up front and look to get the best deal before it becomes a last minute rush.

A popular way to secure funds for travelling abroad that is now much more readily available and convenient, is to use a pre-paid top up card for your Travel Cash.

You should also be aware that when using your credit cards, typically you will not know what rate you are getting or what the additional charges are until you receive your statement.

Cheap Fuel in France
The rising cost of fuel in the UK and France is hitting hard, most of the cost being tax of course. But with no signs from the English or French governments looking to reduce tax and ease the fuel burden it is a good idea to at least find out where to get the cheapest fuel. To that purpose the French government have released a website where you can search for cheap fuel. The link above will get you to the website, it is in French but is still pretty easy to use, you can put in a commune, ours for example is Castelnaudary, select a department from the drop down list or just click on the map.

Worth a look to see if you can reduce your fuel costs and probably more practical to use at a stopover or your destination, even if its only to fill up before heading back home or to fill up your hire car near an airport.

Most expensive fuel, though convenient when traveling, is on the l'autoroute, and the supermarket petrol stations are usually very competitive.

French Weather
It is always useful to know what weather you are likely to encounter on your travels and for French weather information the principle weather web site in France is meteofrance.com . You can look at the region of interest by entering a postal code or, town name, for example Castelnaudary which is located in Aude in France can be found by either entering the town name or its post code 11400.

Another useful web site in English is the Yahoo weather station weather.yahoo.com which again allows you to select the region or place of interest for specific information on your chosen destination and up to 6 days weather using the extended forecast.

Find a 'Vide Grenier'
A 'Vide Grenier' actually means an attic sale or is the equivalent of a car boot sale in the UK. But the French do things a bit differently, so more often than not you will find that the 'Vide Grenier' is spread throughout the entire village and is a mix of professional and amateur sellers offering pretty much anything you can think of. There can also be entertainment and hot food available at some of the larger locations. They are probably every antique hunters' favourite way to spend a day. Just sifting through the offerings looking for a real bargain.
Find a Vide Grenier

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