Overview to France: Travel Guide and Tourist Information
- France Information
- Events in France
- Things to do in France
- Where to stay in France
- France street map
France is a country of extraordinary sensory experiences, sumptuous flavors and fine food and wines. With Paris to the fore, all of its big cities teem with culture, nightlife and life… France, in short, is the travel destination, bar none.
It’s also a country on the grandest of geographical scales. The coasts are lined with stunning beaches; Nice and Cannes on the Mediterranean, whilst the surfing town of Biarritz has the wilder Atlantic waves.
Huge rivers – the Loire, the Seine and the Rhone – wind their way through the beautiful countryside and out to sea. To the south and east, jagged mountains surge skywards in the Alps and the Pyrenees. Mont Blanc, Europe’s highest peak, looms above the world-famous ski resort of Chamonix.
To the north, the striking medieval towns of Rouen, Chartres and Reims are well off the typical backpacking map. So, too, are the grand chateaux of the Loire valley, the remarkable volcanic landscapes of the Auvergne and the ravishing rural areas of the Dordogne, Provence and Gascony.
And this is where the real appeal of France lies – in the less conspicuous charms of its small, unknown towns. The variety and depth of day-to-day rituals throughout the country is quite striking; old men really do play boules in the park and battered old Citroen vans do (still) drive down avenues of plane trees.
France is, quite simply, the picture-postcard place you’d hope it would be. Having a meal in a little neighborhood bistro, buying a warm baguette from the bakers in the morning, browsing a local market, sipping coffee in the watery sunshine of an autumn evening...it's all part of the fascinating fabric of French life.
Traveling in France can sound like a series of too-good-to-be-true, overwrought clichés… until you’re there, that is, and they come alive as the most vivid of realities.
