as anybody sampled the food

They have a big marquee thing where you can get cheese/ham baguettes. Mmmm. I think payment is made with tokens aswell, i.e. you buy tokens and exchange them for beer/baguettes etc.

And they have a Creperie! Nutella !!

sounds good . crepes. crosounts

More interesting and edible than most grounds, although the token system is bizarre.

and beer's fiver a pint

You did this on their board about a week ago and still couldn't spell croissants properly

Churros!

He can't spell a lot of English words properly, so there's bügger all hope of him spelling French words correctly.





And if you drink measures that are not part of a local culture, you can expect to pay more.

Forget the food at the ground.

We went back into Perpignan to Bar Le Source and the owner stuck on some very nice, cheap steaks for us all and dished several bowls of chips for us to enjoy.

Nice guy is Eric!

Le Grande Café de la Bourse does the best spaghetti carbonara I've ever tasted anywhere. Can't remember what it cost, but it wasn't expensive.

And I've had seriously good quiche at Le Grande Café de la Post too.

croque monsieur there is very nice indeed !!
and bar le source is cracking too

vegemite croissants

with all the aussies there

The first time that we went to Perp we were invited to a Friday night at the St Esteve club to which, unfortunately, a group of Leeds p1sshead supporters tagged along, they'd sat outside various bars drinking all day long as that was the purpose for their three day trip - I'm sure we've all seen the same from all SL clubs when they visit there.

Anyhoo, said p1ssheads (who were all middle aged I hasten to add so as not to tar the younger p1ssheads who also tag along on Rhinos trips), stood at the bar abusing the barman for a while until one of them bought a round and tried to work out how much he was being charged for the half litre glasses he was buying.

Of course to him it was a pint, it wasn't, it was half a litre, but he was convinced it was a pint and so kicked up a fuss at being charged three euros "for a pint".

The argument was settled when a quarter litre glass was produced which actually looks much better value because its bigger than a British half pint, whereas the half litre glass looks more like a pint.

The barman tried to explain that the quarter litre glass was half of the half litre glass but that they charged two euros for the quarter litre - the morons were having none of it, it looked like a big half pint so they bought a dozen of the quarter litres instead of six half litres and paid 6 euros more than they should have - they were delighted and tried to explain their clever scam to everyone - we were all too busy laughing.

What lovely a stereotype we portray to our French friends. Drunken and Thick.

We've done the St Esteve clubhouse trip twice – the first time, it was when Cas were in town. Two of their very young female followers started having a drunken brawl in the club house itself – if I remember correctly, they were cousins and they were fighting over the same lad. Foti with the Goti pulled them apart. The French patrons sat and looked on in astonishment (and not, I think, a little amusement at just how the English behave sometimes).

Oh there were tears and wailing about: "I wanna go home". Foti put at least one of them into a cab and sent them back to their hotel. Mad. Some of the other Cas fans were filming on their mobile phones.

Or could it be that all the prices got put up when the rugby teams started coming over? Thats what we were told by someone who works for CST when over there last year

Well, we've never paid those kind of prices, and we've been over, between us, for four actual games since 2006, plus spending our summer holiday in the region last year.

And anyway, they've had rugby played in the town for a very long time – it's not new.



tb was over there last weekend. He said that, at one point, someone was complaining that the bar staff where they were would shake hands with local customers when they left, but not with the visiting Cas fans.

As tb pointed out, they shake his hand when he leaves. Perhaps if more people made an effort to speak just a few words of the local language and absorb just an iota or two of the local culture, instead of assuming they can simply import their little corner of England all the time, then more would find their hand shaken at the end of a night?

Indeed, I remember overhearing an SL fan in Perpignan once, saying proudly that, when they'd arrived at their hotel, the receptionist had said 'Bonjour'. He'd refused to say it back and kept saying 'hello' until she did the same. And he was boasting, as though this was some great victory.

You could hardly make up the sheer pig-ignorant, dumbness of it.

Having said that, we tend to benefit – you seem to win big brownie points if you're England AND you make an effort. We usually end up with free drinks at some point in any foreign trip. Mind, we don't go to tourist bars to down Guinness or Fosters. We stick to proper local bars and cafés.

I've been every year also since the inclusion of the Catalans, and although I haven't seen prices that were exactly 'five pound a pint' they haven't been far off and seem to go up slightly each year (not taking into account how badly the pound has been doing against the Euro which effected me last year either). We were told by someone that at their local they are charged 3 Euros a pint, and that he also noticed the prices shot up in the town centre around the time rugby fans started coming over for SL games. Last year I decided to just go to a shop and get 12 bottles of lager for a shade under 4 Euros and sit outside the bar everyone was using, and for this year will probably be doing something similar.
And while they have had rugby their a long time, I doubt that they will have had such a large influx of holidaying rugby supporters coming into the town anywhere near as often as they have since the inclusion of Catalan Dragons

While I hardly speak French (I did German for my GCSE) I did try when over there, and I basically did what you said there (Used French shops, French market places, French nightclubs that had hardly any tourists there, in fact I think last year the 3 of us that went to one were the only non-French there, etc etc ) and I found the response very mixed. The general public seemed ok, as did those in the market places. Just the staff, waiters etc seemed a bit snotty to us compared to the locals

My language skills are appalling historically – I was absolutely lousy at modern languages at school (although I've learnt quite a bit of German in recent years). But I've managed to pick up and even remember quite a lot. I can do restaurants and bars quite comfortably now.

But we've actually had free drinks, in France, from managers of bars and restaurants. I sometimes wonder what's going on – it's a well-known story that in Paris in particular, staff etc tend to be rude. But we really haven't found that. Just one example: there's a wonderful little local brasserie near where we like to stay in Paris (very near the Eiffel Tower). We've been on every visit – twice on one longer stay. The last time we were in the city, in late May, we arrived on a Friday night in time for dinner, got there and, were given lovely seats outside, welcomed and, after dinner, given free cognac. It was a free aperitif on another occasion.

When shopping in Galeries Lafayette, I took some things to the till – the man serving me added a couple of keyrings as a little gift.

It happens like that. So I tend to be quite skeptical about these stories, about what people expectations are or what they themselves do.

i went to perpignan with no real knowledge of the french language apart form the basics - hello,please,thank you etc and i made sure i always used those wherever i could, and we had a french phrasebook, and i often pulled it out to look for a word or phrase and the french people were very patient with me and smiled etc - although one or two i came across seemed a bit attitudal with the english people.

like i always say to people,if you try and speak their language they will appreciate it more than if you dont bother !

Thats basically the same experiance I have had. For example, me and a mate of mine the first time we went in I think 2006 found that the people in the market place in Canet were very friendly and seemed to be very pleased that we were at least attempting to speak the little French we knew. But on the other hand we found some staff in shops a bit rude. For example, a mate of mine was really struggling to try and order an ice cream from one little shop but was still trying in the little French he knew, and the employee just got really annoyed and fustrated with him. I just pointed at what I wanted afterwards, and we never went back

At least they know you're English.

I was in Brittany a few years ago buying some prints in an art gallery where the owner was multi-lingual, some young kids in front of me were messing about with a postcard stand and he said something to them then started to serve me, I said something to him in French and he replied a bit annoyed in a language that I didn't quite catch, I replied in French that I was sorry but hadn't understood what he said as I was English.

He looked embarrassed and then told me in English that he thought the kids were mine and that he thought I was Italian from my French accent.

I still don't quite understand how that one happened.

No it isnt