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The author is sometimes cheating the reader, other times he is a plain ignorant.

"France is home to countless terroirs, which have been shaped over millennia. It is also home to a culture that recognizes, appreciates, and sometimes even reveres them. Anyone who has traveled extensively through France can grasp the tremendous variety in architecture, cuisine, wine, accents, crops, sports, and cultural references from one French region to the next. Normandy is immediately and irremediably distinguishable from Alsace, in the same way that Provence is different from Brittany, or Corsica from the Alps."

Most terroirs do use potatoes. Which were not there for millennia, the same way foie gras is speculated to have been known to the ancient egyptians and romans, but was not quite common till recently. And even if you accept the lie of the millennial tradition of the foie gras, it was goose liver and not the duck of today.

And the regions are different because of the distance. And of the fact that they were at a time or another belonging to different countries. It is the same intelligent way of putting things as remarking that "China can be quite different from Germany in mysterious ways."

"Go to Normandy and your intake of Calvados and cider will automatically increase."

Only if you are an alcoholic. And many Frenchmen are.

"Visit Brittany and crêpes will be your passage obligé."

Still, the same boring menu you will get from a creperie bretonne anywhere from Paris to Martinique. Using the traditional breton recipe with Polish canned smoked salmon.

"Head to Marseille: bouillabaisse and rosé wine will most likely be on the menu."

And unless ordered the night before, most probably it will be the canned supermarket variety.

"France does not have a puritanical tradition and so, culturally, nudity is fine."

I laughed my *** off. Take a newspaper. Any. Read about how Miss France went out "seins nudes", meaning she wasn't wearing a bra. 40 degrees celsius/104 fahrenheit in the shadows? Women will sweat like farm animals wearing padded bras, a shirt and maybe a second shirt on top. Go to a more liberal beach, the topless girl might be speaking French very well, but she is German or Russian. Back in the 1970s and even the early 1980s it was still common for the doctors to perform abortions without anesthesia as a moral correction. And that is the liberal France. Go closer to the Catholic communities and you'll be getting closer to the most fanatical Mormons. In the last years Femen have tried the nudity only as far as topless in Paris and they were beaten, some even lost teeth.

"Consequently, should you find yourself hitting a French changing room (such as at the swimming pool or gym), be prepared to see some skin"

Sure. That is why around pools one will see plenty of women with wet blouses because of the swimming costume never discarded. So they get to the changing room, they show some "skin" than they put back the wet garments and go like that about afterwards.

"Compared with Americans, French people eat dinner late."

Only when dining out. Otherwise you will see the supermarket crowding at about 5 o'clock, only to empty at about 6 o'clock as everybody is eating. Things do change in and around Paris or on the Swiss borders, as the proportion of state employees getting home at 3 or 4 in the afternoon is lower and many are still at work at 5. Go further away and even the traffic is lighter at 6 o'clock.

"With your typical French dinner starting between seven thirty and nine p.m."

At 9 o'clock you can see the TVs working. Most places, even in tourist areas, say Arles, will refuse to take your order at 9. Do you want to continue your talk after say 9:18 in the evening? You can go sit on the curb, because the personnel is already cleaning. I have met people born and raised on the French Riviera that were shocked that in Spain you restaurants are still open at 10. Here, the most adventurous McDonalds close at midnight, but that is the drive, the restaurant closes at 10.

And all because the indoctrinated amateur writer has an axe to grind:

"It is virtually impossible to have a conversation with a French gauchiste. They are absolutists. They are right and you are wrong."

Still, a peasant boy gathering data from tourist magazines.

"It is fair to state that many outdoor spaces in France are quite manicured."

No. Go to Austria. Get into Switzerland. And the french outdoors are quite dirty. Less plastic bottles and tin cans than in India, but still dirty.

Bottom line, a French nationalist believing in the conspiracy theory, building stories not on experience, but on his own dreams induced by the school system. France is not a person. And his reading preferences? Pierre Hillard. How cute.

"France has been pushed around for a few decades and its people therefore understandably live in a constant state of anxiety. An aggressive France is a suffering France."