*The European WP Meet in Central Southern France!*

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Hi Guys

How was the trip in Avignon ?

I was wondering if you enjoyed the Etap Hotel as well.
What a long discussion to finally choose a chain hotel !

Do you have more pics to add ?

It looked to be a funny week end !

Great! Look forward to seeing you there.

Some people wil be arriving on the Wednesday 27 and Thursday 28, and others on the Friday, and variously staying till the Monday or Tuesday.

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Hi,

I m sorry to bother you again.
I ve found your discussion about fiding an hotel in Avignon for your summer trip.

Actually, I m the manager of the Avignon Hotel Monclar, and I was a bit surprised about the comment I ve read about my hotel.

Most of them were nice, and I thank you for that. You choosed the Etap and I m totally fine with it.

Nevertheless, just to put the things as clear as possible, I just wanted to give you a few details about my own hotel cause a few things that I ve read were wrong :

- The building was built in the 18th century, and on this time no rooms had ensuite showers and / or toilets. Due to a lot of refurbishement, we could install 9 showers for 12 rooms + 4 ensuite toilets.

- For the room without shower or toilets, there are 3 shared toilets, and 1 shared shower.

- Within the 12 rooms, we offer 5 studios with ensuite shower and toilets + kitchenette and 2 appartments of 45 meters square each (which is not that small for 2 or 4 people) with ensuite and kichen.

- About the videos, yes I tried to show everything to not "lie" to the guests, and to give to everyone, the chance to see and choose the favourite room to book.

- Etap is cheaper because they do not have any star. We do have 2 stars.

That shouldn't be a problem with the Etap, and the Monclar said when I rang them that we should post booking requests on their contact/reservation pages. I think they must be used to the language barrier, and writing dates, numbers etc, makes things clearer.

- I think we re the only hotel in Avignon where you ll be able to speak english, spanish, portuguese, italian and japanese. So we wouldn t have any problem to understand anything on the phone. It s just that it is easier to organize a planning according to a clear request. I m sorry if I wasn t clear enough on the phone.

About tripadvisor :

- We do have double gazed windows to cut the train noise, but the thing is that in summer, people love to sleep with opened windows and light on, which means mosquitos and noise...

- Etap is located just next to the police office, and on a busy road, so almost same noise.

- About the bedbugs, actually on tripadvisor, comments are translated to the language you asked and the translation may be far sometimes from realuty. Actually guests mentioned about hunts, because they let opened jam pot on the opened window, giving on the garden. With hot weather and smell of food, after a few hours, it may obviously attract hunts... The guest complained about that... but I ve never understood why they did that. Because over all, it s not allowed to eat in the rooms, you have a garden for that !

- I m a bit surprised that tripadvisor just picked up one comment from the Venere website.
Please check the link below. Many english comments, good ones, but only one bad french.

en. venere. com/ hotels_avignon/ hotel_avignon_hotel_monclar. html#reviews

- Furthermore, we are the only hotel in town which can offer a private taxi service. That could have been a good solution to make transfers from the Avignon Airport, which is 8km far away from the city heart.

Well, I m sorry about my long post, but I just wanted to give you more information about my hotel.
I think that sometimes it s easier to ask us directly instead of imagine and make supposition without real good information

Anyway, I m glad you choosed Avignon for your holidays, it s a really good choice and you will like it. It s a pity you do not come earlier in may cause you will miss the Rose Festival in the Pope s Castle, and the strawberry festival.

Nevertheless, if you re lucky enough, and depending of the weather, you may be able to see the lavander fields which start to bloom in the early June. It s very exciting.

Etap is near the station as well. It means that you can easely take a train, and spend a couple of hours in Arles, famous for the Roman Heritage, and the paintor Van Gogh, to the Gard bridge, or go to the north to see Orange.

If I could give you an advice, try to keep a day for Isle sur Sorgue (train or bus, both stations are near). This is the best village in Provence, very good on sunday because of the antic market, it s also the most romantic place is the whole area.

Luberon is a montain near by, where you ll be able to visit many small villages such as Gordes, Roussillon, Senanque, etc... You can go there by bus but it s not that easy, or rent a bike, bring it in a train, and enjoy the area doing some excercice!

Woow ! it s over midight ! Time to sleep.

Hope you will not get upset, mad, or I don t know what else because of my post.
Please feel free to ask me some other details, I d love to give you more information about Avignon and Provence, and please apologize my english.

Best sunny regards!

Fred

What an incredible coincidence; you browsing Wrong Planet because you think you might be Aspergers/AS and your happening to also be the manager of a hotel we were considering for a while! Wow!

That ( AS ) might explain the room-videos which painstakingly show each door being opened, how when I phoned for info you seemed unwilling to talk on the phone and wanted me to use the e-mail contact for enquiries, and all the languages you know too.

The Etap hotel is better for us because booking is much more flexible, and all the rooms are en-suite, ( and only 3 of your rooms, non-ensuite, are actually cheaper than at the Etap ). But we did like the look of your garden/terrace a lot.

If you think you might be AS perhaps you would like to join us for a while if you are free that weekend? Welcome to WP anyway!

Thank you very much for all your suggestions for things to do and visit.

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"Eye"candy! A sweet shop in Avignon: ( mainly crystallised fruit and marzipan ... mmm !)



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I think some of the day trips Fred84 mentioned sound nice. Especially the Isle sur Sorgue- maybe we should go on Sunday and visit the antique market. I´ve been to Arles also, but I wouldn´t mind going again.

Maybe we should have a coffee one day at the Montclar hotel garden, and visit...(if that´s possible). Since many of you have admired the garden- (I haven´t seen it).

Funny, so the manager of that hotel might have AS?

Hi,

The pic is from "la cure gourmande" one famous shop for local sweets, but a bit expensive anyway.

Their speciality are chocolates (with an olive shape) and nut or almonds inside.

If you go to Isle sur Sorgue, you may reach Fontaine de Vaucluse, which is very near by, and has very nice landscapes.

There is a Paper Museum, which is free, and a small artisanal shop center, with a nice chocolate shop. Restaurants are cheap there, such as in Isle sur Sorgue.

We call it Provencal Venice, like the Italian Venice, because of the small rivers, and many waterwheels in the village. During the market days, you can taste a lot of local food like tapenade (cream of black olive, anchobi, and capres, i m sorry i don t know the name of the last one in english).

Dryed tomatoes (tomates sechees), eggplant cream (caviar d aubergines) are very enjoyable too, especially within a piece of good bread, and a glass of good sweet wine such as a muscat. The most famous one here is the Muscat de Beaumes de Venise (another provencal village).

From Fontaine, you can do some canoeing and reach Isle sur Sorgue with Canoe. It s really exciting and a nice experience to share. You will reach Le Partage des Eaux which is a nice area with 2 good restaurants, but famous because of the tradional images of Provence, noisy cicadas, petanque players, glass of pastis (famous local alcool) a especially a very nice and hot weather.

You will have fun!

Wow! I can´t wait to go there!! !

For anybody planning to fly from Southampton -> Avignon, just looking at the Flybe site, they've increased the price in the last couple of days. Also, 6 days ago, there were only about 1/4 of the seats booked. It's now about 1/2 booked, so there's a bit of a rush at the moment. Not good news for LotusBlossom, I'm afraid

I've just pm'd her to tell her.

I hope she can book soon enough!

Ryanair from London Luton to Nimes, ( near Avignon ) the Thursday 28 May to Monday 1 June is still available at £79 ( incl. tax, charges, insurance, luggage ), but I can't see seat-plan/total availability without giving name etc.

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Just a thought regarding this meetup and meetups in general. To help us be sure we've remembered everything, it could be a good idea to have a public 'checklist'. Starting with things like Passport - (don't forget to check the expiry date), flight tickets, print out flight times, hotel bookings, exchanging currency etc etc. There is a LOT to remember!

It's so easy to forget something, especially as for me travelling alone is a new experience. Aspies tend to get more anxious about things anyway, having a list to refer to will help reduce anxiety and hopefully avoid the stress of turning up in a foreign country with no currency and finding you left the name of the hotel at home....

<Edit> Just found this list of checklists, the Travel ones look very thorough. It even has a list of things to do "a month before"
http://www.freechecklists.co.uk/checklists.html

Hi,

About currency, I thing you may check in your own country to change money.
In Avignon it may be really difficult to change... Almost no bank at all propose change for foreigners and rates will be cheaper in UK.

About the airport, it s very small. Don t worry you can t get lost.
You may ask a taxi to pick you up and bring you in town.
Usually a taxi can take 1 to 4 people, sometimes 5 or 6 as well.
Price to reach the hotel is around 20 euros (not more), then if you share a taxi, it will cost about 5 euros each, which is a really good price.

I don t think there is any bus or shuttle from airport to the town.

For the ones who does not have their flight ticket yet, or if the prices are too expensive, just know that during the high season, eurostar is direct from london to avignon in about 5hours and a half. No stop in paris, but only on saturday.

The arrival will be in avignon central station which is very near the etap hotel, about 5 minuts walking distance. Just when you get out of the station, you have the main street in front of you, you will just have to walk for a few minuts on the left, and you ll reack the hotel.

Easy !

Good idea, do you think we need to start another thread for that, or just post the relevant list at intervals on here? At this point the list is pretty simple;

a) check passport is valid, ( and apply for new one if not )
b) book hotel rooms, ( which with the Etap Hotel can always be cancelled at last moment if necessary, at no cost ), and
c) book/buy flights, or train tickets, to Avignon, or Nimes/Marseille if coming that way.

If you have a well known credit/cash-card, ( Mastercard, Visa, etc ), then you only need to have enough euros for the journey, ( incl. trains/shuttles/taxis from the airport, and for settling in/food on the way ), because all the cash-machines will automatically dispense euros, and the hotel will accept payment with those cards, but if you don't then you will need to organise eurocheques and euros before leaving.

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I hope you'll be able to make it. It would be nice to finally meet you in person.
If you are not able to make it, there is still Autscape on 18 August.
There may also be a WP meeting near London around that time: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt91630.html

A speciality of the region; Calissons, which are a kind of marzipan made with "confit"/preserved apricots so get a blend of almond and apricot taste, with a crisp sugar topping. Totally yumm!



And if you don't like marzipan, macaroons!



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Last edited by ouinon on 07 Mar 2009, 8:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

Just reposting this, ( minus the flight info ), for anyone newly interested, or who didn't know what stage the planning had got to:

The WP meet-up in central S. France, here are the details:

The meet-up is in Avignon the weekend from Friday 29 May to Monday 1 June, but people are obviously free to come earlier or stay later, or both! ( One person will definitely be there from Wednesday, and two others from Thursday )

We will be staying at the Etap Hotel in the centre of Avignon, ( but there are also three campsites in Avignon for people on smaller budgets/who prefer a tent ). All rooms are en-suite, modern, basic but clean, and cost 44€ per room/night for one person, ( 53€ per room/night for two people sharing a room ). The hotel website is at:

http://www.etaphotel.com/

Click on the small UK/USA flag in the top right hand corner of the page and you will get the english version. There is a booking window in the top middle of the page. Tap "avignon centre" into the little window. Reservations are by credit card. If you haven't got one then write directly to the hotel at the address on the hotel info page.

Details of some cheap flights from the UK are on page 9.

There are probably seven people definitely coming, another 10 thinking about it, ( according to the poll ), and anyone else interested is very welcome. I am looking forward to it immensely.