Articles tagged with "France"
France rewards an unhurried trip better than almost any country in Europe: the trains are excellent, the distances are short, and one city can fill a week. The constraints are stairs, cobbles and summer heat.
France is two countries for access. The high-speed rail network and the newer museums are well adapted. The historic quarters people come to see are cobbled and stepped, and the Paris Metro is mostly not step free.
A French family history trip works from the commune outward. The civil registers, parish records and land surveys that matter are held by the department rather than nationally, and most departments have digitized them.
France has two national dates you can plan around and four public holidays that move with Easter every year. This guide tells you what each one does to a city and sends you to the commune for the year you are traveling.
Almost everything visitors read as French coldness is a response to a missing greeting. France runs on a small formal courtesy at the start of every exchange, and the difference it makes is immediate.
There is no single French cuisine. There is Normandy butter and Provencal oil, Alsatian pork and Breton seafood, and a set of mealtimes that will close a kitchen on you if you ignore them.
France carries no advice against travel to any part of it, and its advisory still opens with a wildfire warning. What reaches ordinary visitors is theft on the Metro and the RER, strike days, and two French laws worth knowing before you arrive.
France is a rail country and the train is almost always the right answer between cities. Where it is not, driving brings four legal requirements that visitors routinely miss.
France asks two things of a bag that most destinations do not: footwear that survives cobbles and stairs, and identification you can produce on request. Everything else is layers.
France uses the euro and takes cards almost everywhere a visitor goes. The exceptions are small and predictable: markets, some bakeries, rural tabacs and a few museum desks.