I went to France during the Great Heat Wave (&%$#@$#), and was never treated with anything but courtesy. I was OBVIOUSLY American, trying to work with the language as best as I could. One should always learn at least "please" and "thank you" in ANY country you're in. I had some trouble in Italy, always almost popping out with "gracias" instead of "grazi." It's a California thing.

French are behind us in some ways. They could use air conditioning in their hotels, for example, and few of their public facilities are handicapped-friendly (after some time in Europe, especially in the subways, I came closer to loving the ADA than at any time in my life). You have to pay to use a public toilet. Pay a person actually stationed there! You have to pay for water (no drinking fountains). During the heat wave, immigrants with baskets of water packed in ice were everywhere, thank God. On the beach in Nice, they would run up to you with a cooler full of fresh watermelon slices. The beach there is a pile of rocks. Ouch.

I missed BIG stores. No malls where I was, no Walgreens. Drug stores were little shops, the size of my office. If you travel, bring ALL your own drugstore stuff. Always know where the laundromat near your hotel is. 100 degrees eats up a lot of laundry.

There seems to be no bacon in France. Or pepperoni. There is always ham for breakfast, though.

To be fair, I was in the old "classic" part of Paris. Off in the distance you could see "Future Paris." I'd bet they had AC and drinking fountains.

French are ahead of us in some ways. McDonalds (and there are MANY of them in Paris) served little packs of apples and fruit, a long time before our U.S. McDonalds picked that up (try their new fruit salad! Good stuff!) Nuclear power plants up the WAZOO. Those little drugstores rented my wife a wheelchair, for free. Well, someone else paid for it.