The Slow Road | Category: France

This is one of our favorite countries: full of art, history, and fantastic food. It’s a collection of diverse regions with a wide variety of scenery and cultural traditions. Chris studied French in school, and Melissa feels that her temperament is essentially French, so this is a place we keep coming back to. We spent the last two months of our nine-month European trip of 2008 in France, two months housesitting there in 2021, and one month housesitting there in 2022. The posts below are from those periods. The photo galleries also include pictures from a 2010 vacation in the south of France and an overnight stop in Strasbourg in 2018.

When we visited

August to October 2008, May to June 2010, August 2018, September to November 2021, October to November 2022

Major stops

Paris, Troyes, Dijon, Vezelay, Lyon, Mont-Dore, Poitiers, Amboise, Arles, Aix-en-Provence, Saignon, Strasbourg, Saint Racho, Annecy, Grenoble

Memorable Moment

Hiking up a hill to the village of Vezelay in Burgundy, stopping to rest in a field where, in 1146, the Pope gave a speech calling for the Second Crusade, looking into a tiny chapel built in 1217 by Franciscan friars sent by Saint Francis himself, and ending up in Vezelay’s grand 1096 basilica just in time for mass.

Did you know?

France gets more visits from foreign tourists than any other country (a total of 89 million in 2018).

Photo Galleries

Lions on a fountain in La Rotonde roundabout in the southern French city of Aix-en-Provence

Medieval and later buildings line the Thiou River in Annecy

A sailboat on Lake Annecy on a beautiful late-fall day

The rooftops of Arles, a wonderful small city in southern France next to the Rhone River

The pretty little seaside town of Cassis near Marseille (we ate a good seafood meal at Nino)

We didn't have any champagne during our three days in the Champagne region, but we did see great old buildings (like these leaning half-timber houses in Troyes), stayed with a nice Couchsurfing family, and marveled at stained-glass windows from the 13th century

12th-century carvings of Old Testament figures on the West Portal of Chartres Cathedral

Cafe life in Cluny, a town that grew up around one of the most important abbeys in Europe during the Middle Ages

After our trip to Provence in 2010, Melissa stayed with some hosts in the French Alps, near Chamonix

Mascot the pony leads the way

The ruins of Chinon Castle, a favorite residence of King Henry II of England

The little village of Saignon where we stayed for a week to explore the Luberon region of Provence

Lyon, France's second largest city, feels like a smaller taste of Paris

A monumental fountain by French sculptor Frederic Bartholdi (of Statue of Liberty fame) near Lyon's city hall

During a quick visit to the Massif Central, a mountainous region in central France, we took a cable car up the Puy de Sancy, an extinct volcano. (Apologies for the quality of these photos; we were there at mid-day, and the light was harsh.)

The city of Auxerre in northern Burgundy was a major river port for centuries. Its wealth was reflected in the 13th-century cathedral of St. Etienne (left) and the 11th-century Abbey of St. Germain

Tourists line up for a chance to see the Mona Lisa (on the left) in the Louvre Museum

The city of Poitiers was the ancient seat of the Dukes of Aquitane. Its medieval core has some wonderful buildings, including this intricately carved church from 1086.

The view from Brancion over the countryside of southern Burgundy

The countryside near the city of Macon is famous for its wines

The medieval center of the eastern French city of Strasbourg

The old L-shaped stone farmhouse where we house sat in 2021 near the village of Saint Racho in the southern Burgundy region

The 13th-century Church of the Jacobins in Toulouse

France

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