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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.

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

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 thirteen centuries of near-independence from Paris left the region’s kitchens answerable to the Atlantic, not […]

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

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

Brittany’s Celtic Culture: Language and Identity in France Quimper’s timbered old town, gathered beneath the spires of Cathédrale Saint-Corentin, is the traditional cultural capital of Brittany’s Cornouaille region. 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 […]

Carnac Stones: Brittany’s Prehistoric Megaliths in France

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

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 been governed from London since […]

Normandy Channel Islands Tours for Mature Travellers: What to Expect

Normandy Channel Islands Tours for Seniors: What to Expect 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 […]

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

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 Tapestry and the Norman Conquest: Normandy’s Window into 1066 Bayeux Cathedral above the town’s preserved slate-roofed skyline — the starting point for this Norman Conquest itinerary. 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 […]

Brittany, France Travel: A Cultural Route for Mature Travellers

Brittany, France Travel: A Cultural Route for Mature Travellers Saint-Malo’s granite ramparts, reflected across the beach at low tide. 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 […]

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

A hilltop village above Corsica’s vineyards and maquis scrubland, with the Mediterranean beyond. 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 […]

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

Ajaccio, Corsica, France: Napoleon’s Birthplace and Legacy Ajaccio’s old town peninsula, Corsica 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 […]

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

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

Bonifacio, Corsica, France: A Guide to the Citadel and Coast Bonifacio’s promontory, with the harbour inlet and the Lavezzi Islands visible beyond. 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 […]

Mediterranean Islands Itinerary: Malta, Sicily, Sardinia & Corsica

A 25-Day Mediterranean Islands Itinerary: Malta, Sicily, Sardinia & Corsica for Mature Travellers From Valletta’s Baroque harbour to Corsica’s mountain citadels, this itinerary layers four distinct island histories into a single route. Four islands, four very different histories, and one sea that has connected them for three thousand years — that is the premise behind […]

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 […]

Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, France

Saint-Cirq-Lapopie From atop its cliff, the French medieval village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie has been looking over the valley of the Lot for centuries now. The Gallo-Romans, and perhaps even prehistoric people before them, were attracted to this rocky headland as their home. Situated on a steep cliff 100m above the river Lot, it served as a […]

Vézelay, France

Vézelay The village of Vézelay – officially one of the most beautiful in France – sits on a hill on the left bank of the Cure River over stunning views of pristine French countryside. It’s located in the north-central French region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, on the edge of the Morvan Regional Park. Every wall and street […]

Empires in World History

A History of Empires Throughout the World The history of human civilisation has been for the most part a history of empire. The term empire refers to the rule by a particular group in a…

Pérouges, France

Medieval Pérouges Be instantly transported back in time when you visit the French medieval town of Pérouges. Perched high on a hill overlooking the Dombes Plateau, about 40km from Lyon, it remains preserved as it…

Collonges-la-Rouge, France

Collonges-la-Rouge Emerging from surrounding greenery, some 12 miles (19km) southeast of Brive in the Limousin region, France, is the red village Collonges-la-Rouge. Regarded by many as the most beautiful village in France, it is built entirely from local red sandstone. Its many medieval turrets and watchtowers, houses and great mansions, pedestrian precincts and flower-decked lanes […]