*The European WP Meet in Central Southern France!*

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I will join you as well. Both Etap and Monclar are fine with me.
We should definitely invite Daniel Tammet to come and sit with us for a while!
France- J'arrive

Lotusblossom, for english language version you just click the little uk flag in the top right hand corner where it says "aide", and you get the welcome/bookings page in english!

Then just tap in "avignon" in the topmost space in the booking window near the top centre of the page, and the date and number of nights you want, and it will give you a range of their hotels in and around Avignon. "Avignon Centre" is the top of the list, I think. Click on it for the full info.
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Last edited by ouinon on 15 Feb 2009, 1:27 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Wonderful! I am so glad you can make it. That's brilliant.

Haven't so far had the courage to post anything on Tammet's blog about it, but I agree it is too good a chance to miss. Not sure how to do it though; suggesting it in a comment on a public blog might seem a bit weird.

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I´m coming too! I´m really excited about it.

At this point, I´m not really particular about which hotel. Don´t really have a preference, except that I do want a room alone. Preferably with bathroom, but I can do a few days without, if need be. Both hotels sound ok, for different reasons.

ouinon- do you know anything about the gluten situation in France? Can I buy gluten free things there? Each country is different. Should I bring my own croissants???

I'm having trouble keeping up with the pace of event's here, real life is keeping me so busy I'll be needing this holiday! I gather it's now settled for the weekend of 30th/31st May. I'll fix that in my diary. I'll most probably go from thursday - monday.

Hotel Monclar does look nicer, but at a price and is much smaller so may be difficult to fit us all in. How far are the hotels apart, in case we have to split into two parties? Looking at reviews for the Etap, people have commented that it although it is on a main road, the traffic is not too noisy. This one is more basic but I assume we'll be out and about a fair bit, so that should be fine.

I guess this isn't helping make the decision, is it? How about this. Now we have 5 definates and still need to hear from Greentea anybody else who would like to join this extravaganza. I wouldn't be surprised if 2 or 3 others don't join in now that the details are becoming settled. So we could wait 3 or 4 days to see if anyone else joins. Then see if Monclar can accomodate that number. If not, then switch to Etap, which is big enough that we don't have to hurry. We could set a date for interested parties to declare their interest, say Weds the 18th. After then, applications are closed, bookings made and deposits deposited, Oiunon gets a well earned rest while we can start figuring out our travel arrangements.

I'm quite happy to arrange my own booking, provided they can understand English as my French is truly woeful.

I believe he's English. He's apparently a brilliant linguist, able to speak 10 or more languages. I remember him as being the person who, for a TV program, learned Icelandic from scratch in a week. It would be brilliant to meet him. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I feel he's so famous it's as likely as Nelson Mandela turning up, though!

I would like to give a personal tribute to ouinon for getting together so much information, as well as organizing- (I looked for "applause" in the emoticoms, but I couldn´t find it. So this will have to do):

BTW Maybe the place & date should be mentioned in the "Meet Up" thread as from a quick glance, it seems you get a different crowd over there.

Good idea.

Me too. I'm frazzled with excitement about it in fact.

Thank you very much. I would like to say that I don't think that I could have done it without ManErg's wonderfully calm and very sensible suggestions at several points. And I probably wouldn't even have started thinking about something like this without Greentea's original thread.

I am so looking forward to meeting all of you.


You can buy quite a lot of gluten-free food, biscuits, breads, etc, but I have never thought of looking for any gluten-free croissants so I don't know about that.

Breakfasts, in both hotels, may include egg and yoghurts and cheese aswell as traditional fresh and stewed fruit, and cornflakes if you're not too sensitive to the gluten trace in the malt in them.

But breakfast is not included in the room price, and it would definitely be cheaper, and possibly more pleasant, to walk into the centre, buying patisseries, or gluten-free supplies, on route, and eat them at a café terrace we like the look of, ( you can do that in france; bring your own food to a café ), over a big or a little coffee, or tisane or whatever!


About 700 metres it looks like on google maps. Not too far to walk if some people have to stay at the Etap.


That sounds perfect. I am happy with Monclar ( despite the probability of paying a tad more for a room without toilet ), if there will be 5 of us, because it does look more like "real france"! And like you say if there aren't enough rooms for us all by then we can switch to the Etap.


Yes, I am feeling a bit battered. It's surprising how exhausting collating info and posting it clearly and precisely on here has been.

I hope that you all manage to find cheap flights/trains or car-shares. ManErg, did you see Lotusblossom's offer, ( over on the "Meet-Up" thread ), to share car-costs with you?


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.


As Morgana said, "Good idea", and as you say some more people may yet join us.

I would post bouncy smilies here to express my excitement and pleasure about all this, but they are rather hard on the eyes, so

Last edited by ouinon on 15 Feb 2009, 3:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

So; for anyone joining the thread at this point, we have decided on a meet-up in Avignon, ( you can get cheap flights to there, aswell as TGV ), the weekend starting Friday 29th May to Monday the 1 June. But feel free to come earlier/leave later.

We have chosen two possible hotels, both near to the old centre;

1) The Etap Hotel, a very new/modern/efficient/anonymous one, with 111 rooms at 44€/night ( single en-suite ), and a very flexible booking system, and

2 ) the Hotel Monclar, an old atmospheric one with very pretty terrace/garden, but only 12 rooms, ranging in price from 30€ -45€ - 65€/night, depending on size and bathroom facilities, which we will go for if there would be enough rooms for us all.

We would love it if some more people decided to join us, and so we won't book any rooms until Wednesday 18th February, so that if anyone else posts here before then we can take them into account when picking the hotel. If there are no longer enough rooms free when we come to book, we will switch to the Etap.

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Thanks Ouinon!

Im so excited! My mum popped round on her way home and I showed her the monclar hotel and she was very envious!

This is going to be the best

Okay ... ... I have just discovered Trip Advisor, ( what a find ! ) :

http://www.tripadvisor.com/

And looked up the two hotels ( just tap in "Etap Hotel Avignon" or "Monclar" in "Search" at top, and you get them ) ... ...

Monclar does not sound good. The sort of things that I said I couldn't guarantee because I didn't know the hotel:

I realised on waking this morning that I hadn't seen photos anywhere on their site of the "corridor facilities"/bathrooms, nor do they say how many there are, so I tapped in "bad reviews of hotel monclar" in french on french google, and had no trouble finding any... ...

Dirty bathrooms, noise from trains in the night, ( station and railway just behind the hotel as it says on the hotel website but apparently the windows are not double-glazed/sufficiently thick to cut out the noise ), ground floor rooms not sound-insulated from rooms above them, mouldy smell in smallest cheapest/attic rooms, and one person's reservation for two was lost.

Etap Hotel on the other hand sounds exactly what it says it is; clean, basic, simple, practical/convenient, flexible, and the rooms are all ensuite, and Etap Hotel bathrooms are good; I've used a few. ( And only the three smallest/attic rooms at Monclar would be cheaper, at 30€ and 35€, than those at the Etap ).

I totally agree that the Monclar terrace/garden looks very pretty, but so does the rest of Avignon. Terraces are beautiful all over S. France, ( it's the sun !) . There are gorgeous café terraces in squares with platane trees and sunshades and flowers. There are the rambling grounds of the Palais des Papes, with little lake, and awesome views, where we could picnic and relax with a bottle of something.

I vote that we don't bother with the Monclar, ( someone says on Trip Advisor that perhaps it would have been worth paying for the most expensive room after all, and that the best part of the experience was seeing the facade on arriving ! !! ), and just go ahead with booking rooms independently at the Etap hotel, ( 44€/night ), which would also mean that people could decide to join us at any time over the next couple of months.
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Last edited by ouinon on 16 Feb 2009, 4:25 am, edited 5 times in total.

never been to france, having been...a n***a from south chicago



ahh..okay



ahh. okay.

continued from page 3 :

The only person who had a really good experience of the Monclar was a business man who rented one of the apartments.

And one person mentions finding "punaises" in their room, which is some kind of insect ... ... ( will wiki that ) ... eeekk, it's bedbugs ! !!

Don't worry, Lotusblossom, there will be lots of wonderful places to sit and chill out/enjoy the sun/people-watch/sip cool drinks etc. And we will all have bathrooms at the Etap too. Which is good when its hot, for showers at all hours.

It is. Tell your mother that even if we're not at the Monclar the rest of Avignon is full of places just as gorgeous, ( and better ).

I'm feeling rather stupid for having been so credulous again. Why didn't I think of looking for bad reviews yesterday? Oh well, I did finally.

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So there are currently 5 of us definite about going;

ManErg
Lotusblossom
Morgana
KenG
Me

The page for booking rooms with Etap Hotel is at:

http://www.etaphotel.com/

Click on the little UK/USA flag in the top right hand corner to get the english version, and then just fill in the reservations/booking window. The hotel is "Avignon Centre".

Anyone else interested feel free to join us, weekend 30-31 May, for short/long stay as desired.

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I just reserved my three nights. They give you a reservation number at the end of booking; it's very important to keep that, and have it with you when you arrive.

I didn't see any option for reserving without a credit card, ( Visa etc ), so I imagine if you don't have one you would have to write to the hotel direct, ( address on the web page "info" for Avignon Central ), in order to book. Hope that is not a problem for anyone.

You can cancel your reservation at the last moment/until 19.00 of the first day you have booked.

Edit: I just got the e-mail confirming my reservation. Yessss!

I wonder who the other three people are that have voted in the poll? I do hope that you can manage to come, whoever you are!

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