The Northwest (Normandy & Brittany)5 places
- Carnac & Megalithic BrittanyMore than three thousand standing stones marching in parallel rows across fields for four kilometres, raised by farmers…
- Mont-Saint-MichelA medieval abbey stacked on a rock in a bay with some of the fastest tides in Europe, cut off from land twice a day and…
- Normandy — the D-Day Coast & BayeuxThe beaches where the liberation of Western Europe began, quiet stretches of sand and bluff whose ordinary emptiness is…
- Saint-MaloA granite corsair city inside its own walls on the Breton coast, where the tide moves through some of the largest…
- ÉtretatWhite chalk cliffs on the Normandy coast that the sea has cut into natural arches and a lone needle of rock, the…
The North & Paris3 places
- Alsace — the Wine Road & StrasbourgThe most German corner of France: a 170 km wine road threading hillside villages of crooked half-timbered houses…
- ParisThe most visited city on earth, and still worth it: the Louvre and the Seine and the boulevards, yes, but also a city…
- The Loire ChâteauxA river valley packed with the pleasure-palaces French kings and nobles built when a castle stopped being a fortress…
The Alps & the East2 places
- Chamonix & the Mer de GlaceFrance's largest glacier, reached by a little red rack railway, with the ice cave re-carved every summer because the…
- LyonFrance's eating city, built where two rivers meet, with a Renaissance old town threaded by traboules — covered passages…
The South (Provence & the Riviera)1 place
- The Verdon GorgeA limestone canyon up to seven hundred metres deep in the hills of Provence, with a river at the bottom the colour of…
The Southwest (Dordogne & the Pyrenees)1 place
- Lascaux & the Vézère CavesThe Dordogne valley where Ice Age people painted galleries of bulls, horses, and deer seventeen thousand years ago, so…