Take A Ride With Me

I've been traveling the French Autoroute several times a year from Switzerland to Southern France and vice versa since 1990. 

Sometimes for a weekend. 

Sometimes for a couple of months or longer.

It's changed.

The 1990 toll booths and their cashiers have been replaced with funny little squares on my windscreen. I get a toll bill later. No worry about change or waiting in line while the person in the car in front to me drops his money.

The quality of the road has improved, but it was always good.

There are more Autoroutes these days. No longer do I get bogged down in Lyon. We can breeze around it.

Toilets no longer require my feet to dangle my body over a hole in the rest stops called Aires. Toilets are super modern, super clean, and many have red, yellow, green buttons so I can rate how the cleaners did as well as paper sheets showing the cleaning schedule. 

Not only can you park, you can picnic, maybe walk a bit looking at trees, flowers and sometimes snails. Some have exercise or play areas for humans and dogs.

Some have music, machine coffee and the internet. 

There's plenty of containers to throw your trash. There are routine clean ups for the slobs that don't. 

There's another kind of rest stop than the Aires. 

Those are places offering a variety from complete meals to sandwiches. French sandwiches have gone from an overly buttered baguette with a dry piece of ham to those with pretty good fillings. 

There was a period when McDonald's and Burger Kings flourished on the Autoroutes replacing the better chain Paul's, but I'm seeing Paul's coming back with less American chains. I can imagine the disappointment of someone taking one trip to France in their life to see Burger King or McDonald's.

There's also chain restaurants such as Autogrill which operates in 30 countries, that gives a traveler a chance for a good meal. They have a more French feel, even if they are Italian.

Mini stores allow a traveler to pick up food for anything from a snack or a simple grocery list for when you get home after their stores are closed. There's also regional souvenirs and books.

Some rest stops are mini museums to French performers such as George Brassens. Although not on the Geneva-Argeles route, on the aire to Toulouse, there's a history of Carcassonne visible from the Autoroute aire complete with posters. 

 

For the tourists traveling the Autoroutes, they can see posters usually in browns and yellows about what is important nearby. It could be the nuts of Grenoble, a chateau, a favorite composer or poet, special trails, bridges, the WWII French Resistance.

 

Over the last 50 years these signs have been increasing until there are at least 300 of them. Someday, we plan to take a trip and investigate each one between this or that place. It's a mini historic/cultural/natural tour of the country.

I'd love to get a coffee table, pictorial book of them all if one is ever printed.