Travel Tips for St. Joan's France

 

Traveling around in France is not as difficult as you think. They drive exactly as we do - for the good and bad of it - and the letters of the town names make some sense to our minds in comparison to lets say German or Russian.

Not to toot my own horn but I think it would be very helpful to your travel plans if you get my St. Joan CD-ROM as there is a section on it that I call PLACES. My husband and I went to MOST of the places associated with St. Joan and so I think that the information in this section alone would be invaluable to you and your needs.

This section of my web site shows you Domremy and surrounding area. http://www.stjoan-center.com/meuse/

This section of my web site is where I tell you about my two trips to St. Joan’s France http://www.stjoan-center.com/Trip/

Here are some tips I have learned from my three times to St. Joan's France.

  1. It is very important that you learn some BASIC FRENCH so that you will be able to obtain the necessities that you will need while in France.
  2. October is a very bad time to travel in France. It is VERY COLD and rains A LOT! The damp cold goes through you despite the warmest of clothing you may wear. In addition a lot of the tourist sites will be either closed or on reduced times when they will be open to the public.

The best time to go is the end of April and the beginning of May. Why? Because even though it is cold then too you will be able to take part in the Orleans Festival, which starts on April 29th and goes on until May 8th. There is a festival in Domremy around the second weekend of May. And the city of Compiegne has a marvelous St. Joan festival around the 22nd of May.

3) Leaving from New York, the flight time will be about 8 to 10 hours - this includes your being 2 hours early at the airport of departure.

4) You will be arriving in the AM French time - DO NOT - no matter how tired you both feel - DO NOT go to sleep as your internal clock will be thrown off permanently if you do this. So it is best if you stay up to at least 8 PM, French time.

5) Don't forget to get your passports. You don't have to get any 'SHOTS' because they are equal in hygiene as we are.

6) DO NOT drink any MILK in France. Even though they pasteurize their milk - our bodies are not used to it and so your body will react very badly. I know this from personal experience! Either drink coffee or tea with lemon, soda or bottled water. Oh yes, - at Domremy there is the 'spring of the fevers', where people who were ill in Joan's time would walk to and drank the water to get better. DO NOT DRINK this water - as it gave me A FEVER AND I WAS SICK for three days afterward!!!!

7) One way to save some money is to go to the French supermarket = "Supermarche" and buy bread and cheese (Baby Bell is EXCELLENT) a bottle of preserves jam - we liked strawberry the best - and bottled water. Here too you will find concentrated fruit juices in a metal bottle that we used to 'flavor' our water.

8) Before you go, you need to go to a large book store in your area and purchase two items - a Michelin 'Motoring Atlas of France' (which has a detailed road atlas of ALL the roads in France) and a Michelin guide to hotels and restaurants. You need to study these very well even before you leave on your trip as it is important for you to formalize yourselves with what roads you want to take to get you where you want to go. Michelin also sells guided tour book (green cover) of the different areas of France. But this is NOT absolutely necessary if you get my CD-ROM as you will already know a lot about the places that you will be seeing.

9) Rent your car at the airport. You can either use a travel agent to get your air tickets and have this person also arrange for a car rental. You can also do this on line when you purchase your plane tickets. Or you can do it when you arrive in France. But I would not recommend this as there is a chance that you would not get the best deal.

10) The large "red" roads are similar to our Interstate and so it will take about 4 to 6 hours driving to reach Domremy. If you take the smaller 'black' roads - which are more scenic it will take at least 8 hours to reach Domremy.

11) The last I heard (from people who have gone to Domremy in recent years) there are no longer ANY hotels in Domremy so you will have to travel an additional 12 miles south to Neufchateau where you will find several nice hotels.

 

Well there you have it. If you have any further questions please feel free to e-mail me at stjoan@nmia.com.