The Eiffel  Tower and Champs-Élysées. Notre-Dame. The Louvre. Montmartre. These headline acts lure almost 100 million tourists to France each year. But Paris, and France, are so much more than the sum of their clichés. Here are eight less-obvious reasons I keep returning to the world’s favourite country:
I’ll never forget arriving in Arles in Provence and stumbling across a smallish but spectacularly formed colosseum in the heart of the city. Similarly breathtaking relics of the Roman Empire are strewn across the country, from the towering Pont du Gard in the south of France, the highest ancient aqueduct ever built, to Reims’ Gateway of Mars, the Gallo-Roman theatre in Lyon and Vienne museum’s impressive collection of mosaics. In France, (Roman) wonders never cease.
These alfresco taverns pop up in spring and summer, often by rivers, but also in the Paris suburbs and the countryside. Some are huge, with music, dancing and entertainments, but I prefer the more intimate ones where you dine and drink well with locals in a beautiful setting. Like La Guinguette des Ventres Faims (The Tavern of the Hungry Stomachs) beside the Dordogne River in Bordeaux where I had the best mussels of my life – simmered with cured ham in a luscious sauce of white wine, butter and garlic and served in a fishbowl-sized dish. Sadly, it’s since closed but that mussel memory lives on.
France has one of Europe’s longest river networks and steering a boat along waterways and canals is a serene way to explore its diverse regions. The pace of life is gentler, the connection to country more intimate as you drift in and out of villages, lunch at waterside restaurants and even stock up on wines, produce and gossip from enterprising éclusiers (lock-keepers) along the way. Rather than racing around France on tick-a-box itineraries, on a canal boat the country comes to you.
The French obsession with bread is hardly a secret – they famously started a revolution over it – but there’s a world of baked goods to sample beyond the baguette. Northern France’s brioche-style cramique; the focaccia-like fougasse from Provence – topped with herbs and salt and often olives, anchovies and garlic – pogne de romans breakfast buns flavoured with orange-blossom water, and the irresistible pompe aux grattons packed with pork crackling.
The 150th anniversary of Impressionism this year seems as good a time as any to celebrate the way the light in France just hits different. Whether on the Normandy coast where Monet captured the chalk cliffs and shimmering seas in shifting sunlight, or the sparkling blues of the Côte d’Azur that inspired the likes of Picasso, Matisse and Renoir, there’s magic in the air. As Matisse said of Nice, which he made his home for almost 30 years, “When I realised that every morning I would see that light again, I could not believe my happiness.”
Western Europe’s largest country still harbours places of true wildness that feel a world away from the civilised streets of Paris. Places like Les Landes on the Atlantic with its long, empty beaches, pounding surf and vast pine forests; the Camargue, Europe’s largest river delta, with its salt marshes and lagoons home to flamingos, endemic white horses and black bulls; and the glorious emptiness of the Massif Central mountains, ideal for long hikes on your lonesome.
One of my most vivid French food memories is tasting a Saturn peach at a makeshift farmers’ market beside the Rhône at Avignon. I’d never seen these strange fruits before so the grower insisted I try one and, to this day, nothing conjures summer in Europe for me like a juicy flat peach. The country’s markets rarely disappoint: I had my first chickpea pancake (socca) at one, my first Atlantic oysters, the tastiest tomatoes since childhood, and discovered an encyclopaedia of cheese and charcuterie.
Spain has the Balearics. Italy has a treasury of offshore jewels including the Aeolians, Capri and Sicily. But France’s islands don’t get anywhere near the love they deserve. Highlights include the sun-bleached stone and sand of the Frioul archipelago off the coast of Marseille, the semi-wild Lérins Islands in the Bay of Cannes and the most beautiful French island of all – Corsica.
Want more?
The Most Beautiful Villages of France website lists more than 150 of the country’s most picturesque places, all with fewer than 2000 inhabitants, rich in heritage and highly photogenic. It’s a good pointer to some hidden (and not-so-hidden) gems.
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Original URL: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/lifestyle/hidden-gems-in-france/image-gallery/4dc02866cfd08ab43b4215eb14c33602