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FRANCE
Paris
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Nice
Overview:
The sheer physical diversity of France would be
hard to exhaust in a lifetime of visits. The
landscapes range from the fretted coasts of
Brittany to the limestone hills of Provence, the
canyons of the Pyrenees and the half-moon bays
of Corsica, from the lushly wooded valleys of
the Dordogne to the glaciated peaks of the Alps.
Each region looks and feels different,
has its own style of architecture, its
characteristic food and often its own patois or
dialect. Though the French word pays is
the term for a whole country, local people
frequently refer to their own immediate vicinity
as mon pays - my country - and to a
person from another town as a foreigner. This
strong sense of regional identity, often
expressed in the form of active separatist
movements, as in Brittany and Corsica, has
persisted over centuries in the teeth o
centralized administrative control from Paris.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the French
countryside is the sense of space. There are
huge tracts of woodland and undeveloped land
without a house in sight. Industrialization came
relatively late, and the country remains very
rural. Away from the main urban centers,
hundreds of towns and villages have changed only
slowly and organically, their old houses and
streets intact, as much a part of the natural
landscape as the rivers, hills and fields.
The nation's legacy of history and culture is so
widely dispersed across the land that even if
you were to confine your traveling to one
particular region you would still have a
powerful sense of the past without having to
seek out major sights. With its wealth of local
detail, France is an ideal country for dawdling;
there is always something to catch the eye and
gratify the senses, whether you are meandering
down a lane, picnicking by a slow, green river,
or sipping Pernod in a village café. There is
also endless scope for all kinds of outdoor
activities, from walking, canoeing and cycling
to the more expensive pleasures of skiing and
sailing.
If you need more than urban stimuli to activate
the pleasure buds - clubs, shops, fashion,
movies, music, hanging out with the beautiful
and famous - then the great cities provide them
in abundance. Paris, of course, is an
outstanding cultural centre, with its stunting
contemporary buildings and atmospheric back
streets, its art and its ethnic diversity. And
the great provincial cities like Lille and Lyon,
Bordeaux, Toulouse, Marseille and Nice vie with
the capital and each other, like the city-states
of old, for prestige in the arts, ascendancy in
sport and innovation in urban transport.
For a thousand years and more, France has been
at the cutting edge of European development, and
the legacy of this wealth, energy and experience
is everywhere evident in the astonishing variety
of things to see: from the Gothic cathedrals of
the north to the Romanesque churches of the
centre and west, the châteaux of the Loire, the
Roman monuments of the south, the ruined castles
of the English and the Cathars and the
Dordogne's prehistoric cave-paintings. If not
all the legacy is so tangible - the literature,
music and ideas of the 1789 Revolution, for
example - much has been recuperated and
illustrated in museums and galleries across the
nation, from colonial history to fishing
techniques, airplane design to textiles, migrant
shepherds to manicure, battlefields and
coalmines.
Many of the museums are models of clarity and
modern design. Among those that the French do
best are museums devoted to local arts, crafts
and customs like the Musée National des Arts et
Traditions Populaires in Paris and the Musée
Dauphinois in Grenoble. But inevitably first
place must go to the fabulous collections of
fine art, many of which are in Paris, for the
simple reason that the city has nurtured so many
of the finest creative artists of the last
hundred years, both French, Monet and Matisse
for example, and foreign, such as Picasso and
Van Gogh.
If you are quite untroubled by a need to improve
your mind in the contemplation of old stones and
works of art, France is equally well endowed to
satisfy to satisfy the grosser appetites. The
French have made a high art of daily life:
eating, drinking, dressing, moving and simply
being. The Pleasures of the palate run from the
simplest picnic of crusty baguette, ham and
cheese washed down by an inexpensive red wine
through what must be the most elaborate takeaway
food in the world, available from practically
every charcuterie; such basis regional dishes as
cassoulet; the liver-destroying riches of
Périgord and Burgundy cuisine; the fruits of the
sea; extravagant pastries and ice-cream cakes;
to the trance-inducing refinements - and prices
- of the great chefs. And there are wines to
match, at all prices, and not just feel
inadequate in the face of all this choice, never
be afraid to ask advice, for most French people
are true devotees, ever ready to explain the
arcane mysteries to the uninitiated. |
