LA FRANCE - 2010

15 days incl. air, or 14 days from Paris to Paris (RA)

Return to France Vacations

Vacation Overview

This is the ideal vacation for an in-depth exploration of France! Begin with a 2-night stay in Paris that includes guided sightseeing of all the famous landmarks and a bird’s-eye view of the city from the second floor of the Eiffel Tower. Via Rouen—where Joan of Arc was burned in 1431—visit Caen, the Normandy landing beaches, Bayeux to admire Queen Matilda’s tapestry, and monumental Mont St. Michel. Pass through Châteaubriant and in the Loire Valley, visit Chambord and Chenonceau Castles. In picturesque St. Emilion, attend a wine tasting before continuing to Bordeaux, the walled town of Carcassonne, and Nîmes. On to Pont du Gard, Avignon, and the film festival town of Cannes to Nice. Head north through the French Alps to Grenoble. In Lyon, enjoy a panoramic view from Fourvière Hill and enter Burgundy for an overnight in pretty Dijon. Board the high-speed TGV train back to Paris for the end of your tour.

Things to see on your vacation: View Vacation Photo Slideshow

A Vacation Story Eiffel Tower

Imagining Paris without the Eiffel Tower is like London without Big Ben or San Francisco without the Golden Gate Bridge. But no sooner had the architect Gustav Eiffel beaten his 700 competitors in the design competition for the 1889 Centennial Exposition, celebrating a century since the French Revolution, than a vocal outcry began to halt construction of the edifice. Three hundred famous French artists and writers signed a petition in the newspaper “Le Temps” denouncing Eiffel’s radically modern design as “useless and monstrous,” a blight upon the elegant fabric of the City of Light. Others critics were even more vicious, describing the proposed tower as a “tragic street lamp,” a gymnasium apparatus…incomplete, confused and deformed,” “a giant ungainly skeleton,” “a half-built factory pipe,” “a carcass” and even “a hole-riddled suppository.” Nature-lovers argued that it would disturb the flight patterns of Parisian birds. Even as the iron lattice began to rise, Parisians continued to refer to it by the less-than-flattering nickname, “the metal asparagus.” Of course, no sooner had the tower opened in 1889 than the rabid criticism evaporated.