France travel tips

15 guides in France — when to go, how to get around, which ATMs not to use, and what a fair price looks like.

bridge during night time

ParisFranceThe city of light, love, and croissants

an aerial view of a city next to the ocean

NiceFranceThe French Riviera at its most liveable

Rows of lavender in flower on the Valensole plateau in Provence at first light

ProvenceFranceLavender, limestone villages and a light that brought half the painters of Europe here and kept them

snow covered mountain under blue sky during daytime

ChamonixFranceThe town at the foot of Mont Blanc, where alpinism was invented and where the Aiguille du Midi cable car puts you at 3,842 metres in twenty minutes

low angle photo of white concrete building

BordeauxFranceAn eighteenth-century city of pale stone, with the world’s most famous vineyards half an hour out

brown concrete building near river during daytime

LyonFranceTwo rivers, Roman ruins on the hill, secret passages through the buildings, and the food capital of France

a harbor filled with lots of boats next to a city

MarseilleFranceFrance’s oldest city, a Mediterranean port with limestone fjords on its southern edge

Historic buildings reflected in a calm canal waterway

StrasbourgFranceHalf-timbered houses over canals, a cathedral that was the tallest building on earth for two centuries, and Germany across the river

white and black rock formation on blue sea under blue and white cloudy sky during daytime

CorsicaFranceA mountain range in the sea, with the GR20 down its spine and water the colour of a swimming pool around it

green lake surrounded by mountains under white clouds and blue sky during daytime

AnnecyFranceA canal town on the clearest lake in Europe, an hour from Geneva and forty minutes from the nearest ski lift — the base people use when the whole family does not ski

man in orange jacket and black pants riding ski blades on snow covered mountain during daytime

Val d’IsèreFranceA high resort that links with Tignes into the Espace Killy, holds snow into May, and has a village underneath the ski area rather than a car park

a snow covered mountain with a ski lift in the distance

CourchevelFranceFour villages stacked up one mountainside, from a working valley town to the most expensive address in the Alps, all of them on the Trois Vallées lift pass

a couple of people walking across a snow covered field

TignesFranceA resort built high and ugly on purpose, with a glacier that skis in summer, a lake that freezes hard enough to walk on, and the snow record to justify all of it

Méribel at dusk, the village lights under a pink sky

MéribelFranceThe middle valley of the Trois Vallées, built in wood and stone by a Scotsman who thought concrete resorts were a mistake, and still the only one that looks like a village

aerial view of snow covered mountains

Alpe d’HuezFranceA sunny plateau above Grenoble with the longest black run in the Alps dropping off the back of it, and twenty-one hairpins of Tour de France road climbing up to it