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Category: France

France

Odyssey’s small group tours of France go beyond Paris to explore regional France, its history and culture exploring through walking or by small coach.

Vannes, Brittany: Medieval Walls and the Gulf of Morbihan

Medieval ramparts of the kind seen in Vannes, Brittany, with old slate-roofed washhouses along a stream and formal gardens at the foot of the granite walls.

Vannes, Brittany: Medieval Walls and the Gulf of Morbihan Vannes, France, sits at the head of the Gulf of Morbihan in southern Brittany, a walled town that grew up where a tidal river meets an almost landlocked inland sea. For a time in the late Middle Ages it was the favourite residence of the dukes […]

Dinan, Brittany: A Walled Medieval Town on the Rance

A walled hilltop town above a calm river with a tall granite viaduct across the valley, evoking Dinan on the Rance in Brittany, France.

Dinan, Brittany: A Walled Medieval Town on the Rance Dinan, France, sits on a granite spur high above the River Rance, its ramparts still wrapped around an old town of half-timbered houses, steep cobbled lanes and church towers. Below, a long, steep street drops to a small river port where boats tie up beside a […]

Rennes, France: Brittany’s Historic Capital

Leaning half-timbered houses with ochre and red panels lining a cobbled lane in the old town of Rennes, Brittany.

Rennes, France: Brittany’s Historic Capital Rennes, France, is a city of two faces. Walk one way from the cathedral and you are among leaning half-timbered houses whose upper floors almost touch above the lane; walk the other and you reach broad stone squares laid out by a royal architect after a great fire in 1720. […]

Rouen, France: Cathedral, Joan of Arc and Medieval Normandy

The Gothic west front of Rouen Cathedral in Normandy, France, with its two unmatched towers and the tall openwork iron spire behind.

Rouen, France: Cathedral, Joan of Arc and Medieval Normandy Rouen, France, was the capital of the Viking settlers who gave Normandy its name, the city where Joan of Arc was tried and burned, and the cathedral town that Claude Monet painted over and over again as the light changed across its stone. Its old centre […]

Omaha Beach, Normandy: A Visitor’s Guide to the D-Day Landing Site

Omaha Beach in Normandy at low tide, a wide expanse of wet sand below steep green bluffs under a soft morning sky.

Omaha Beach, Normandy: A Visitor’s Guide to the D-Day Landing Site At low tide, Omaha Beach is a quiet, very wide sweep of sand below green bluffs, with holiday houses at the foot of the slope and the occasional dog walker at the water’s edge. It takes a moment to connect that calm scene with […]

Brittany Food and Drink: Crêpes, Cider and Coastal Cuisine, France

Concarneau's Ville Close ramparts reflected across the protected harbour at golden hour

Brittany Food and Drink: Crêpes, Cider and Coastal Cuisine, France Brittany does not cook like the rest of France, and it does not want to. The peninsula’s Celtic settlers brought buckwheat and a taste for dairy rather than wine, and centuries as an independent duchy, before union with France in 1532, left the region’s kitchens […]

Normandy Food and Drink: Cider, Calvados, Cheese and Coastal Cooking

Rows of apple trees in a Normandy orchard, with a half-timbered farmhouse in the background

Normandy Food and Drink: Cider, Calvados, Cheese and Coastal Cooking Normandy’s fields do the talking long before its history does. Ranks of apple trees lean over hedged lanes in the Pays d’Auge, black-and-white cattle graze the same damp pastures that made this coast famous for cream and cheese, and the tides that shaped its beaches […]

Brittany’s Celtic Culture: Language and Identity in France

Quimper's timbered old town leading toward the twin spires of Cathédrale Saint-Corentin

Brittany’s Celtic Culture: Language and Identity in France Brittany’s Celtic culture sets it apart from the rest of France. Long before the region was folded into the French crown, it was Celtic in speech, memory and settlement — a granite peninsula facing the Atlantic that migrants from Britain colonised as Anglo-Saxon expansion pushed them south […]

Carnac Stones: Brittany’s Prehistoric Megaliths in France

Wide dawn view down parallel rows of granite standing stones at Carnac, Brittany

Carnac Stones: Brittany’s Prehistoric Megaliths in France Long before Stonehenge was raised on Salisbury Plain, the people of southern Brittany were already dragging stones across this stretch of Atlantic coastline and setting them upright in long, deliberate rows. Today, more than three thousand of these menhirs still stand near the town of Carnac, forming one […]

Normandy, Brittany and Channel Islands: A 22-Day Itinerary

Mont-Saint-Michel abbey isolated by high tide, mirrored in the calm waters of the bay

Normandy, Brittany and Channel Islands: A 22-Day Itinerary Draw a line from Paris to London on a map of northern France and the Channel, and you cross a border that has moved more than almost any other in Europe. Normandy was Viking before it was French. The Channel Islands have owed allegiance to the English […]

Normandy Channel Islands Tours for Mature Travellers: What to Expect

Saint-Malo's granite ramparts overlooking the coastal harbour in Brittany, France

Normandy Channel Islands Tours for Mature Travellers: What to Expect Deciding how to see Normandy, Brittany and the Channel Islands is really deciding how much logistics you want to manage yourself. An independent traveller faces a genuinely complicated route: Norman abbeys and D-Day beaches, a ferry crossing to islands that are British in law but […]

Normandy D-Day Beaches Itinerary: A Guided Route from Bayeux

Arromanches Bay in Normandy with the surviving concrete caissons of the Mulberry harbour visible offshore

Normandy D-Day Beaches Itinerary: A Guided Route from Bayeux Most visitors arrive at the Normandy coast with a general sense of what happened here on 6 June 1944 and little sense of how to actually see it — which stretch of sand to prioritise, which museum adds context rather than repetition, and how to read […]

Bayeux Tapestry and the Norman Conquest: Normandy’s Window into 1066

Bayeux Cathedral rising above the preserved slate-roofed medieval town of Bayeux, Normandy

Bayeux Tapestry and the Norman Conquest: Normandy’s Window into 1066 Few single objects explain as much European history as the Bayeux Tapestry. This 70-metre strip of embroidered linen, stitched within a generation of the events it depicts, turns the Norman Conquest of 1066 from a textbook date into a sequence of faces, ships and battle […]

Brittany, France Travel: A Cultural Route for Mature Travellers

Saint-Malo's walled skyline reflected across an expansive low-tide beach, Brittany, France

Brittany, France Travel: A Cultural Route for Mature Travellers Cross the border from Normandy into Brittany and the landscape changes before the language does. Granite replaces limestone, Celtic crosses stand alongside Romanesque church towers, and place names like Quimper, Concarneau and Carnac hint at a region that spent centuries resisting incorporation into France. For travellers […]

Corsican Food: A Mountain-to-Coast Guide to Eating in Corsica

Aerial view of a Corsican hilltop village surrounded by vineyards and maquis scrubland, with the Mediterranean Sea in the distance

Corsican Food: A Mountain-to-Coast Guide to Eating in Corsica Corsica’s kitchens tell the story of an island caught between two worlds: a mountainous interior long shaped by pastoral self-sufficiency, and a coastline moulded by Genoese, French and wider Mediterranean trade. The result is a food culture that can feel like several regional cuisines layered on […]

Ajaccio, Corsica, France: Napoleon’s Birthplace and Legacy

Aerial view of Ajaccio old town peninsula in the bay, mountains behind, Corsica, France

Ajaccio, Corsica, France: Napoleon’s Birthplace and Legacy Ajaccio sits on a wide, sheltered bay on Corsica’s west coast, its ochre and cream buildings rising above a harbour still busy with fishing boats and ferries. It is Corsica’s capital, but it is best known to the wider world as the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte, born here […]

Things to Do in Corsica Beyond the Beach: Towns, Coast and Heritage

Aerial view of Bonifacio citadel on limestone cliffs above a turquoise harbour, Corsica, France

Things to Do in Corsica Beyond the Beach: Towns, Coast and Heritage Corsica’s coastline gets most of the attention, but the real character of the island lives inland and in its towns — in the fortress streets of Bonifacio, the Napoleonic salons of Ajaccio, and the granite villages of Cap Corse that have barely changed […]

Bonifacio, Corsica, France: A Guide to the Citadel and Coast

Aerial view of Bonifacio's promontory, harbour inlet and the Lavezzi Islands, Corsica, France

Bonifacio, Corsica, France: A Guide to the Citadel and Coast Bonifacio sits on a spur of limestone that drops seventy metres straight into the Mediterranean, and the town has spent eight centuries daring the sea to take it back. Houses lean out over the cliff edge as if testing their luck, a Genoese citadel crowns […]

Mediterranean Islands Itinerary: Malta, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica

Composite of Mediterranean island scenes: a Baroque harbourfront, Greek temple columns, Bronze Age stone towers and a clifftop citadel

Mediterranean Islands Itinerary: Malta, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica Four islands, four very different histories, and one sea that has connected them for three thousand years — that is the premise behind a well-built Mediterranean islands itinerary. Malta’s Baroque capital, Sicily’s Greek and Arab-Norman layers, Sardinia’s Bronze Age towers and Corsica’s mountain villages rarely appear in […]

Riquewihr, France

Riquewihr, France Riquewihr is classified as one of France’s most beautiful villages, and it’s easy to see why. Nestling at the entrance to a small, tree-clad valley on the Alsace plain, the village offers a splendid view over the valley of the Rhine, from the edges of the Alps to the fringes of the Vosges. […]

Conques, France

Conques The small village of Conques, located in the Aveyron region of Southern France, is an incredible site. Lying at the confluence of the Dourdou and Ouche Rivers, it is surrounded by stunning mountain and forest scenery forming a kind of shell – hence its name, derived from the Latin concha for ‘shell’. The village […]