Red Tide

When I first arrived in the South of France ten (gulp!) years ago, I took a new friend's advice and spent the first summer away from the heat. I drove my shiny blue Ford KA around northern Europe and returned just in time for the "rentrée" (back to school time). Ten years ago everyone I told thought it was perfectly normal to have found myself stuck on the highway in a sea of automobiles. The travel advisory, had I understood it at the time, said that the roads were "red" if not "black" which means, stay home. I do remember the word "bouchon" repeated over and over and it wasn't hard to work out what a cork was while creeping along like a shark, slyly shifting lanes trying to move- just- one- more- car- ahead.
Today, the tradition of the Juillettistes or Aoutien I wrote about earlier is becoming a thing of the past. Families in France thankfully still have the holiday time, but not the money to travel for more than a week at a time, certainly not a month at a time. So the roads are not only clogged on certain days as they used to be, like August 15 when half of France was returning from holiday and the other half was beginning it, but every weekend.
Vive les vacances!