Destination Feature: France

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FRANCE
France is consistently the world’s top tourist destination with around 75 million visitors annually. It’s also as popular as ever among British holiday-makers, skiers and day-trippers. Budget airlines and extended Eurostar services have opened the country up making it even more accessible. Guides to Paris were the number one bestsellers in the UK in 2002*. The France pages of Lonely Planet’s website received over 350,000 visits in 2002.

*According to Booktrack, 133,579 Paris guides were sold in 2002.

General Information:
The French wrote the book on la vie en rose and gave the world champagne and camembert, de Beauvoir and Debussy, the Tour de France and the Tour Eiffel. So if they have a finely tuned sense of national pride, who are we to point fingers?

Although the ubiquity of Levis and Le Big Mac flusters the country’s cultural purists, anything from a year in Provence to a weekend in Paris will explain why half the world grows dreamy over stalking the streets of Cyrano or picnicking Manet-style sur l’herbe. France has been synonymous with Romance for longer than your grandmother cares to remember, so whether you visit Paris or the Pyrenees, the Côte d’Azur or the auberge de jeunesse, be sure to keep your fantasies in check, your expectations in line and your joie in your vivre.

Destination Facts

Full country name: French Republic
Area: 547,000 sq km (213,330 sq mi)
Population: 59 million
Capital city: Paris (pop 10.95 million)
People: 92% French, 3% North African, 2% German, 1% Breton, 2% Other (including Provençal, Catalan & Basque)
Language: French (also Flemish, Alsacian, Breton, Basque, Catalan, Provençal & Corsican
Religion: 90% Roman Catholic, 2% Protestant, 1% Muslim, 1% Jewish, 6% unaffiliated
Government: Democracy
President: Jacques Chirac
Prime Minister: Jean-Pierre Raffarin

Economic facts
GDP: US$1.32 trillion
GDP per head: US$22,700
Annual growth: 4%
Inflation: 2%
Major industries: Oil refining, steel, cement, aluminium, agricultural products & foodstuffs (wheat, barley, maize, cheese), luxury goods, chemicals, motor manufacturing, energy products
Major trading partners: EU (Germany, Italy, UK), USA
Member of EU yes
Euro zone participant: yes

Travel facts
Visas: Nationals of the EU, the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Israel do not require visas to visit France as tourists for up to three months. Except for people from a handful of other European countries, everyone else must have a visa.
Health risks: Your main risks are likely to be sunburn, foot blisters, insect bites and upset stomachs from overeating and drinking.
Time: GMT/UTC +1
Electricity: 220V, 50Hz
Weights & measures: Metric

Currency
euro (EUR), formerly French franc (FF)

Money advice
The land of the US$5 café au lait is not exactly Europe’s cheapest destination, but that doesn’t mean you have to break the bank to visit. Devoted scrimpers can get by on around US$40 per day, though it means a whole lot of brie-and-baguettings in the park. For a more well-rounded culinary experience and a comfy bed or two, a minimum of US$80 is in order. Of course, for the Dom Perignon crowd, those figures might not cover even the day’s pourboires – count on dropping US$200 and up if you’re really living large. Student and senior citizen discounts are common.

Traveller’s cheques are the safest, most convenient way to carry funds in France and are almost universally accepted, especially in larger towns and tourist centres. Banks and exchange bureaux give better exchange rates for traveller’s cheques than for cash; Banque de France offers the best rates in the country. Credit cards get a better exchange rate on purchases and cash advances; France’s ATMs accept all the major internaitonal credit and bank cards. Leaving a pourboire (tipping) is done at your discretion – restaurants and accommodations add 10-15% to every bill, but most people leave a few coins if the service was satisfactory.

When to go
Spring offers the best weather to visitors, with beach tourism picking up in May. Temperatures aren’t too bad in Autumn, although the short days mean limited sunlight and the cold starts to make itself felt towards the end of the season, even along the Côte d’Azur. Winter means playing in the snow in France’s Alps and Pyrenees, though the Christmas school holidays send hordes of tadpoles in uniform scurrying for the slopes. Mid-July through the end of August is when most city dwellers take their annual five weeks’ vacation to the coasts and mountains, and the half-desolate cities tend to shut down a bit accordingly. Likewise during February and March.

Events
The French are a festive bunch with many cities hosting music, dance, theatre, cinema or art events each year. Rural villages hold fairs and fêtes which celebrate everything from local saints to agricultural progress. Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in Provence is the venue for a colourful gypsy festival in late May honouring Sarah, patron saint of the gypsies. Enthusiastic singing and dancing characterise this extravaganza. Prominent national days off are May Day (1 May), when people trade gifts of muguet (lily of the valley) for good luck; and Bastille Day (14 July), which is celebrated by throwing firecrackers at friends. Regional events include the primping and preening prêt à porter fashion show in Paris (early February); the glittering and often canned Cannes Film Festival (mid-May); the International Music Festival in Strasbourg (first three weeks of June); the mainstream and fringe theatre of the Festival d’Avignon (mid-July to mid-August) and the Jazz Festival in Nancy (9-24 October).

Activities
France’s varied geography and climate allow for a wide ride range of outdoor pursuits. The French have taken to hiking with gusto, and there are walking paths through every imaginable kind of terrain. Probably the best known trails are the sentiers de grande randonnée, long-distance footpaths designated by the letters GR. The GR 5 winds through the Alps, the GR 4 is in the Massif Central and the popular GR 10 runs along the Pyrenees from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Cycling is another mania in France. La Margeride in Languedoc is a particularly inviting area for mountain biking, as are the Alps, Brittany and the Pyrenees. Skiing is also popular with some of Europe’s finest – and most expensive – facilities in the Alps (at Chamonix, for example), though prices tend to be much cheaper in the Pyrenees around Cauterets and the Massif Central, which is good for cross-country skiing.

The best swimming spots are found along the Atlantic coast (near La Rochelle), the Channel coast of Normandy, southern Brittany, the Mediterranean (including the coast of Corsica) as well as on lakes such as Lac d’Annecy and Lake Geneva. The French are at ease with their bodies, and this is reflected in a number of venues for naturism (walking around bollock naked), mostly in Langedoc-Rousillon and the Côte d’Azur. Other activities include: rock climbing in the Alps and the Pyrenees; horse riding in Burgundy and the French Basque Country; surfing in Biarritz; rafting down the Gorge du Verdon in Provence; and hang-gliding in Languedoc. If your interests are more cerebral, you can take French language courses or learn the ins and outs of the soufflé at regional cooking classes.

Getting there and away
Air France, France’s national carrier, and scores of other airlines link Paris with every part of the globe. Other French cities with direct international air links include Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Strasbourg and Toulouse.

Paris is the country’s main bus and rail hub, with services to/from every part of Europe. Buses are slower and less comfortable than trains, but they are cheaper, especially if you qualify for the 10% discount available to people under 26 or over 60 or hunt around for discount fares. The completion of the Channel Tunnel in 1994 has meant travel between England and France – on the silent, ultra-modern Eurostar rail service – is now quick and hassle-free. The Chunnel also has high-speed shuttle trains that whisk cars, motorbikes and coaches from England to France.

By sea, the quickest passenger ferries and hovercrafts to England run between Calais and Dover, and Boulogne and Folkestone. There are numerous routes linking Brittany and Normandy with England; Saint Malo is linked by car ferry and hydrofoil with Weymouth, Poole and Portsmouth, while Roscoff has ferry links to Plymouth. Ferries also ply the waters between France and Ireland (Cherbourg-Cork), the Channel Islands, Sardinia (Marseille-Porto Torres), Italy (Corsica-Genoa) and North Africa (Marseille-Algiers, Marseille-Tunis, Sète-Tangier).

Getting around
France’s domestic airlines link most urban centres, but flights can be quite expensive. Occasionally discount tickets will work out cheaper than overland travel so it can be worth scouting around if you’ve got a big hop in mind. France has an excellent rail network, operated by the state-owned SCNF (Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer), which reaches almost every part of the country. Thanks to the high-speed TGV (train à grande vitesse), travel between some cities (eg Paris and Lyon) is faster and easier by rail than by air.

Inter-regional bus services are limited but buses are used extensively for short-distance travel within regions, especially in rural areas with relatively few train lines (eg Brittany and Normandy). On longer trips, buses tend to be much slower but slightly cheaper than trains; on short runs, buses are generally slower and more expensive.

Having your own vehicle can be expensive, and is sure to be inconvenient in city centres where parking and traffic are problematic. Be warned that most driving in France is done with the horn, or ‘French Brake Pedal’, as it is often called. As a rule of thumb, don’t be timid or overly respectful once on the road as this technique will often confuse the natives. Renting a car is expensive if you walk into an office and hire a car on the spot, but prebooked and prepaid promotional rates are reasonable.

France is a superb country for motorcycle touring, with winding roads of good quality and lots of stunning scenery. It’s also an eminently cyclable country, due largely to its extensive network of secondary and tertiary roads that are relatively lightly trafficked. Another relaxing way of seeing France is to cruise its canals and navigable rivers by houseboat. These usually accommodate four to 12 passengers and can be rented for a weekend or several weeks.

Local transport includes the cheap and efficient Metro and RER underground networks in Paris (there are also metro lines in other cities), trams, buses, téléphériques in the French Alps, expensive taxis (especially outside the major cities) and river shuttles.

Copyright © 2002 Lonely Planet Publications