France
We have visited France on many occasions, sometimes just for a few hours on a day trip or when passing through to other parts of Europe, sometimes for a day or two on business and on three occasions for a holiday break.
Like many English people we enjoy a love / hate relationship with France and the French. Although we love the country there are times, usually just once or twice during a visit, when we feel no liking for the way we are treated and all the old nationanalistic animosities are felt towards an individual or circumstance. As in any country a smattering of the language helps generate goodwill most of the time but unlike most countries we have found that occasionally there was no goodwill to be had and we felt that the deficiencies of our command of the French language was used against us. That said I am sure that we shall return for more visits in the future and perhaps the better we get to know France the better we shall get to like it's people.
Our most recent visit in May 2006 was to Paris for a long weekend. We traveled on the Eurostar and stayed in a very comfortable small hotel in a quiet side street close to the Arc de Triomphe. Both were booked as a package through Cresta Holidays. Trying to see as much of Paris as possible in three days was never going to be a rest cure but by careful planning we were able to include many of the best known monuments including the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur as well as spending time viewing the art on display at the Musee d'Orsay and browsing the flea market at the Porte de Vanves. We made a decision not to go into the Louvre as it would have taken too much time out of our weekend to do it justice and we decided to have nothing to do with the Da Vinci Code 'sites' but we did enjoy strolling the Champs Elysees and the gardens in front of the Louvre. Pictures.
We have had two lovely holidays in the south of France, visiting the Languedoc in May 2004 and Provençe in May 2001. On both these holidays we stayed in a gîte found through the excellent brochure provided by Chez Nous.
In 2004 we flew to Carcassonne and picked up a rental car to drive to our lovely gîte near Limoux. We were well placed to visit both the beach at Narbonne and the alps at Ax les Thermes as well as enjoying the small towns and villages in the area and walking in the local woods where in the evening twilight we surprised - or were surprised by - a family of wild boar, something our hosts hadn't seen in all the time they had lived there! Pictures.
In 2001 we chose to take two days each way to drive through France enjoying the country as we went. We made a stop at Reims to view the crumbling pits and grandstands of the old motor racing circuit before continuing to Contrexéville for an overnight stop at a very picturesque lakeside location. We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and a walk around the lake before continuing our journey and arrived at our gîte in the small village of Cairanne, a short drive from Orange in the late afternoon. Having our own car allowed us to travel at will and we visited Vaison la Romaine, Sablet, Mount Ventoux, Gigondas, and Avignon as well as traveling further afield to the Chaine de l'Estaque and Arles, made famous by van Gogh in his painting "Cafe Terrace at Night". The return journey, never as enjoyable as the anticipation of a holiday, was enlivened by Peter Mayle's audio book "A Year in Provençe" which allowed us to enjoy all over again the characters and places we had seen. Pictures.