Anything I MUST provide for French guests?

Can you dip your :croissant: /tartine /:baguette_bread: in it? If yes, then :+1:

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I don’t surprise our guests with a welcome pack - after all what’s the point of giving them something they don’t want? So I ask them what they would like, whether they’d prefer wine / beer / juices. Works perfectly - they get exactly what they want.

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Good idea…

See as a family with kids after how ever many hours in the car a nice cold bottle of bubbly would be SO appreciated and a lovely, lovely start to the holiday!

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The parents can always drink it when the kids have gone to bed.
We put a bottle of cremant, bread, croissants, butter, jam and half a dozen of our eggs in our welcome basket. and any veg we had in season in the garden.

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You get a nice cold bottle of locally sourced water instead…:no_mouth:

And a jar of fruit flavoured sugar.

I’m an Aussie so drink loads of water - 2L a day - more if hot in summer so that would be drunk on arrival with great pleasure but would be gutted to not have a glass of wine after a journey, particularly if delays / not being able to stop at the shops!

Gants de toilette or flannels, lots of them because you use a new one every time you wash. I don’t do gites etc but often have people to stay and give them a pile of the cheapy white IKEA washcloths (the ones that come in packs of 10) along with their towels.

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Heavens Vero! Thanks for this. I had no idea. What happens to the used ones? Are they thrown away or just put in the wash?

They stick them in a basket and you bung them in the wash once there’s enough to warrant it - at least that’s what I do! These are the ones


There’s not much grimmer in a bathroom than a nasty wet or damp facecloth from a few hours ago, I think.

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Believe me, there’s plenty. Or have you never lived in a student flat, Vero?

Hahaha yes in the developing world and obviously when I was a student I had to go quite far to find a bathroom and it was a good candidate for outlawing under the biohazards convention - but no I meant now as a grownup and possibly a gite guest :grin:
Student bathrooms it helps of course being pissed most of the time.

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I dont’ wash mine every single time, I hang over the top of the shower screen so nice and dry quickly and doesn’t get soggy / yukky!

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They are fab, used them all the time when Rémy was small, just kept a big stack in the kitchen for little hands / faces!

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Exactly! Now my daughters are big they use them for make-up removal etc and the cloths still come out of the machine snowy.

I can bear witness to many French people who don’t do this! We have a basket of them in the bathroom, and quite a lot of the time only two or three get used in a week… of course some people nring them with them, but not all.

Naturally, as my great-granny used to say there are lots of dirty people about.

Edited to add that I can speak only for my family and friends since as I said I don’t run a gîte etc business.

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Well I wouldn’t want to find I have some of your family or friends staying and I wasn’t up to scratch, so thank you for mentioning it. Not sure I’m going to make it to Ikea though, I’m not comfortable with crowds and won’t be for a time yet I suspect.

They do have a small items delivery option, about 6 euros I think, if it’s under a certain weight and less than 100€, which I always find handy to do every so often. I wait until I’ve got a number of bits then clump them together in one order and the delivery charge obviously becomes much more reasonable than paying 6€ delivery for, in this case, flannels which cost 5€ in total. :joy: Not that it is necessarily what you want to do in this case @SuePJ, I’m just treating this as my SF helpful tip of the day in case anyone isn’t aware. :laughing:

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