Tag Archive
afternoon airport area August building car Chateau city coast countryside couple crowd day Europe Festival fine food France garden Gothic history July lamb lavender market middle Music Paris place Provence reason region restaurant River Rue seafood summer sun time town trip Visit water way work
Côte d’Azur
I used to think that the Côte d’Azur was one long private beach where you had to wrestle with naked Germans for the right to lay your towel out on three square inches of pebbles. The sea, I imagined, was warm fish soup topped with a layer of sun oil. The only places to eat were snooty restaurants, where you couldn’t get served anyway, and the pervading smells were Ferrari fumes and fake lavender essence. Of course I was absolutely right; in July and August, some of it is exactly like that. Read the rest of this entry »
Chateaux of the Loire
The Loire is France’s longest river, and one of its most untamed. But it’s not its landscape that draws most tourists to the lower Loire, but the fine chateaux and palaces along its banks.
Castle building on the Loire started in the Middle Ages with keeps like that at Blois, but it was in the Renaissance that the mania for fine chateaux really began. French kings sponsored huge building programmes at Amboise and Chambord, while rich nobles built palaces like Azay-le-Rideaux, Chaumont and Chenonceaux.
Read the rest of this entry »