Travelling the Globe: St. Leonard de Noblat, France

Two Monday's ago I posted about experiencing new things. The main topic of this post was my travels to foreign countries. I received a lot of comments about that post, especially for a Monday. It was apparent to me that everyone either liked to travel or would like to travel. Based on that information I decided to post from time to time about some cities and countries I have visited.

My plan is for these posts to offer a few pros and cons from the places I've been. The pros and cons will be random things based on my experience. You won't read pros like the Eiffel Tower was cool or the Louvre had a lot of artwork. It will be much smaller off the wall things that I feel the rest of the world must know. The Travel channel will not tell you this stuff people. Somebody has to do it, and that somebody might as well be me.

Our first installment of travelling the globe will be about France. Specifically this post is about St. Leonard de Noblat, France. It is a small town located in the center of France near Limoges in case you need to look it up for visualization purposes. Without further ado here are my notes from France.

PRO: The best thing about the entire visit to France was ordering a Royale with Cheese from McDonald's.

CON: Every meal was a formal affair. The food was good but who wants to eat off fine china and drink from the crystal stemware every night. You may not know this but champagne, fine china, waiters with tuxes, bread crumb sweepers, and artistic looking food every night can have an adverse affect on your sanity. My boss and I had to skip out and go to a local pizza joint or McDonald's once or twice a week to get a break.

PRO: There was a grocery store across the street from the hotel. They sold tall boy cans of German beer for about 30 cents a can. I always kept a few in my room.

CON: There was no refrigerator for the German beer in my room.

PRO: It was really cold outside so I sat my beers on the window ledge to keep them cool. After work a cold one was always waiting.

CON: One of my trips required me to get off the plane in Paris after an overnight flight and about an hour of sleep and drive to the plant. That is a five hour drive on no sleep through Paris traffic in a stick shift. I drive a stick shift about once every two or three years whether I need to or not. This is not a recommended travel procedure.

PRO: I bought some french lip balm for the extremely chapped lips I inherited from working outside in the cold twelve hours a day. I used it for a few days before I left. Arica claimed it when I got home and said it was the best lip moisturizing product ever. She lost it and found it again not to long ago. She finally used it all, but it was definitely the chapstick that kept on giving.

CON: The crappy exchange rate of dollars to euros caused me to pay $6 for the aforementioned lip balm. The exchange rate made buying everything from cheeseburgers to gasoline painful.

PRO: I got paid to visit France. That may not be the best pro, but I am running out of things that you might find interesting. Let's just say I put this in here to keep things fair and balanced. I don't want any angry Frenchmen after me.

CON: French people have a certain reputation around the world. Although I made several friends while I was there I found that for the most part the reputation had been earned.