forrest@ucsbcsl.UUCP ( ) (07/28/84)
I just came back from a trip to France during which time I spent some very enjoyable days in the South of France. This trip was a low/medium budget trip that used a rental car and camp grounds as the primary transportation and lodging. By the way, you can rent small European cars (50 mpg on the highway) for about $100 in amsterdam. Even Avis is close to this price. Anyway, we wanted to spend some time on French beaches but were worried about the crowds and expense of the Riviera. Luckely we found out about Languedoc, the area to the west of Marseille. There are many nice small resort cities here that don't have the snobbery of the Riviera and consist of other Europeans on vacation. My favorate was called La Grande Motte which is near Montpellier. We stayed at a camp ground called Lous Poulin(?) was everybody said was expensive, although at $8/night for 2 people, including unlimited hot showers, we couldn't complain. The beach was great. Miles and miles of clean, sand beaches, warm, clean, clear water, topless girls (its amazing how soon you take this for granted), windsurfing, etc. I could have stayed there all summer. We were the only Americans at nearly all the campgrounds we stayed at but found that this made us a noveltly. We never had any problems during the whole trip. Nothing lost, stollen(sp?), or broken. Speaking French helped but the high points of this trip would have been just as great without French. Jon Forrest