Monday, February 1, 2010

10 Things I Love About France...#6

Vacation Time

Cinque Terre, Italy

I never realized how little vacation time Matthew got in the US...until we moved to France! French people have got this vacation time thing down! In the US, Matthew took one week off in the summer and one week off at Christmas (2 weeks at Christmas if we were lucky and Christmas Eve, Christmas day, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day were all on week days). Now that we live in France, he gets the 5 standard weeks of vacation, plus 3 more weeks of vacation because his work week is listed as a 39 hour work week (instead of the legal 35 hour work week)! 8 weeks of vacation! (plus all of the French National holidays) It sounds absurd even to write it! Now, granted, some of the weeks are mandated when you can take them. For example, this year, Matthew has to take off the first 3 weeks of August. Still, nothing to complain about!

Vacation is a very appropriate topic to be writing about, especially since we are leaving on Sunday for a week long trip to the French Alps. In the US, I could never imagine Matthew being able to take off a week in the middle of February for vacation! There are so many places we want to visit in Europe during our time here, it is a good thing Matthew has lots of vacation time!

1 comment:

Jen said...

Je suis d'accord! The vacation rocks! :)