Paris has a reputation for being a city of romance, a city of arts par excellence and a city of fun. There’s endless entertainment here for the observant, who will learn as much about Paris and its inhabitants from walking the streets as from visiting the great museums. The romantic image of the Loire Valley is quintessentially French; the gentle France of medieval tapestries, the hunt of the Sun King, splendid Renaissance chateaux, Rabelais and gargantuan feasts. What was once a valley of kings has given way to a more bourgeois paradise that can be enjoyed by all, with food and wine of a quality to delight that most discerning traveler.
Sightseeing in Northern France
■ Paris: Paris has almost exhausted the superlatives that can be reasonably applied to a city. Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower and the Champs-Elysees have been descrived innumerable times. First-time visitors often arrive with expectations: intellectuals pontificating at café, romance along the Seine and nice bookstores.
■ Loire Valley: The word “chateaux” bring to mind images of grand towers rising to the heavens, of extravagant dining rooms for hundreds of guests, of exquisite gardens and shimmering moats. It encapsulates both the intrigue of French history and vision of romance France. It’s a word belongs to the Loire Valley.
■ Normandy: These days Normandy I s an enticing blend of old and new. Fishing boats jostle with designer yachts in the harbor of Honfleu, contemporary restaurants and chic boutiques sit alongside half-timbered houses and Gothic churches in Rouen, and the reconstructed centre of Caen is a short drive away from the cobblestones of Bayeux.
Activities in Northern France
■ Wineries visit: A visit to France is an opportunity to gain a real appreciation of wine. Vineyards line the roads, not only in Burgundy and Bordeaux place along the Mediterranean coast, the length of the Loire, near the German border, and can be found even in Paris itself. Visitors and struck not only by the vast amounts of land devoted to grape growing but to the quality and diversity of the wines produced.
■ Cuisine: The French nation’s love of good food is only natural, for France offers an enormous variety of produce. It is able to do so because it is a land of great climatic and agricultural diversity and its coastline is washed by both the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean, which together offer a temptingly wide variety of seafood.
■ Shopping: From the ultrachic couture houses of av Montaigne and the cubby-hole boutiques of the Marais to the best underground shopping centre at Les Halles and the flea-market bargains at St-Ouen, Paris is a city that knows how to make it, how to display and charge for it.
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