Table of Contents for this Episode
Categories: French Châteaux, French Culture
[00:00:00]
Annie Sargent: This is Join Us in France, episode 593, cinq cent quatre-vingt-treize.
Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today on the podcast: France’s Most Stunning Destinations: What’s Worth the Hype (and What Isn’t)
Annie Sargent: Today, I bring you a conversation with Elyse Rivin, my longtime friend and a licensed tour guide in France, and we’re talking about the places in France that genuinely make you stop and say, "Wow."
We cover everything from prehistoric painted caves to perched Provençal villages, but we also get real about overhyped attractions, tourist traps, and how to set [00:01:00] expectations before you go.
This podcast runs on chocolatine, coffee, and listeners like you. Book an itinerary consult, take a Paris VoiceMap tour of mine, join me for a day trip around the southwest of France with my electric car, or support the show on Patreon at patreon.com/joinus. It all keeps things going.
And to support Elyse, go to patreon.com/elysart.
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If you want to learn more about France, you can browse all the episodes at [00:02:00] joinusinfrance.com/episodes, and you can get a free weekly recap at joinusinfrance.com/newsletter.
My thanks to David Shen for sending in a one-time donation using any green button on joinusinfrance.com that says, "Tip your guide." David wrote, "Thank you for your podcast. I enjoy it very much. Merci."
Well, merci to you, David. Your contribution makes it possible for me to continue sharing the podcast with everyone.
Magazine segment
Annie Sargent: There will not be a magazine part of the podcast today because this recording ran long. Listen, we have a lot of wow destinations in France, okay? And we love to chat about France with Elyse, as perhaps you do as well. Let’s go.
Welcome to Wow France
Annie Sargent: Bonjour, Elyse.
Elyse Rivin: Bonjour, Annie.
Annie Sargent: [00:03:00] Wow.
Elyse Rivin: Wow. Wow.
Annie Sargent: We’re going to talk about wow destinations in France today. We all love a wow destination, don’t we?
Elyse Rivin: We sure do.
Annie Sargent: Yes, yes, yes. And France is really famous for having many of them. We’ll discuss several of them today. Perhaps all of them, I don’t know. No, we can’t possibly get to all of them.
Elyse Rivin: I don’t think we can get to all of them, no.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
What Makes a Wow
Annie Sargent: But I also hope to have some time to get into how the travel industry is changing with the advent of social media, and I’m thinking especially of Instagram and TikTok. And of course there are different kinds of wow destinations. You have the historic and cultural, you have the natural wow destinations. You have the picture-perfect villages. And in France we have entire neighborhoods of cities that are wow indeed. It’s never the whole city really. Even Paris, not all of it is wow, despite what you might have heard.[00:04:00]
Elyse Rivin: No, no. I don’t think that would exist anywhere in the world, you know?
Annie Sargent: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Then you have the art and architecture type of wow, and then you have a food and wine type of wow. And we’re mostly going to talk about destination wows, not the food and wine so much today.
Ugly France Reality Check
Annie Sargent: But we also have a lot of places that are not wow in France. We need to make sure you understand this. There’s even an expression in French, it’s called La France Moche. A oui, je ne connais pas ça!.
Elyse Rivin: Moche.
Annie Sargent: It means ugly France.
Elyse Rivin: Ugly France.
Annie Sargent: Ugly France. If you Google it it’s going to be like, you know, freeway exchanges, commercial zones, housing developments.
Elyse Rivin: Really?
Annie Sargent: Billboards that are put in the wrong place in front of something pretty. Garbage cans that are left out for everybody to see. And as a matter of fact, Les Plus Beaux Villages de France, the association, they force villages to hide or remove these [00:05:00] unsightly things and plant trees and flowers instead.
Elyse Rivin: Well, since it’s a label and the villages have to apply to get this label, it makes sense. It makes total sense to me that they would.
Annie Sargent: Right.
Managing Wow Expectations
Elyse Rivin: And also of course, and I guess this is part of what we’ll talk about in a minute anyway, but there are things that are wows in the guidebook or that are wows on a podcast, like ours or anybody else’s, and they aren’t necessarily my wows.
There’s a certain amount of subjectivity, let’s face it, you know? I mean, one of the problems with having a destination, I can think of places outside of France that I still have not been to, and the places that I’m dying to go to see, and there’s always a little part of me that says, "Mm, be careful. You don’t want to be disappointed." You know? You just don’t know.
Annie Sargent: Right, and there are some people who kind of build up expectations so high that when they actually get [00:06:00] to the place, they are sorely disappointed by small things.
Elyse Rivin: Oh, yeah. Yes.
Annie Sargent: So we have to be, we have to be a little careful about setting expectations correctly. And I think where this is very clear is for food, for restaurants. I think people are often wowed by restaurants because they arrived very hungry.
Elyse Rivin: Mm.
Annie Sargent: Rather than because there was something truly special about the food.
Elyse Rivin: Oh, that’s interesting. Okay.
Annie Sargent: I think if you show up and you’re very hungry, you’re going to enjoy the meal a lot more than if you just had a big breakfast. Oh, it’s lunchtime anyway, let’s go eat. Yeah?
Elyse Rivin: Mm, yeah. Well, yeah, I guess so. I mean, it’s true that I’m not as, I was going to say this in French, porté sur la bouffe. I’m not as obsessed with eating in fancy or really good restaurants as I think some people are. It’s just not a criteria [00:07:00] that’s that important to me, so it’s interesting. I’m thinking about what you just said because for me, I’m always happy to find the little restaurant that nobody knows about in a neighborhood that’s not the hype of tourism, and I’ll go in and try it, that kind of thing, you see.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah.
Elyse Rivin: That always seems to be the best surprise ever, basically, you know? Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Right, and really, there’s also the sort of wow where you weren’t expecting to be so happy with the place you went, and that’s the serendipitous sort of things that happen to all of us but cannot be planned.
Elyse Rivin: No.
Annie Sargent: If you go places, and I think a lot of the questions I see online about travel, it’s really people asking, " Is serendipity and wow going to happen for me if I go to Annecy, for example?" And perhaps it will, perhaps it won’t. There’s no way to tell you. It’s a [00:08:00] very personal sort of thing, but we all know that.
Elyse Rivin: We all know that, although it is true, and of course I think that there are a couple of places or things that are so cliché because they are perfect examples of the danger of the wow factor, you know.
Annie Sargent: What do you mean?
Mona Lisa Hype Trap
Elyse Rivin: Well, okay, let’s take the basic one that, for me, is the classic, and that is the hordes… the hordes that go to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa, okay?
Annie Sargent: Ah, yes, yes.
Elyse Rivin: Okay? I think for people from all over the world, of course now it’s an enormous number of people that come from Asian countries and things like that, but Americans too, I think. There are millions of people that go to the Louvre, and one of the reasons they go is because they have to, have to, have to see the Mona Lisa, okay?
Annie Sargent: And get their photo in front of it.
Elyse Rivin: And get their photo in front of it. I have no idea whether people really have any idea what they’re looking at even, because first of all, when you go, it’s an absurd situation because it’s, like, 50 people deep, you know. They’re [00:09:00] saying they’re going to move it to someplace else. I don’t know if they will. But the other thing is, and this as a person who’s a painter, who studied art history and everything else, it’s practically a scam as far as I’m concerned, you know?
I mean, the Mona Lisa is an interesting painting. Leonardo Da Vinci did a couple of other paintings that are quite as beautiful that are in France, certainly did other paintings elsewhere that are absolutely magnificent. But it’s become such a hyped thing that people will pay to go to Paris just to go to see this, you know?
And I don’t even know if people really pay attention to the painting or not, or if just they want to prove, you know, it’s like the Amélie Poulin thing with her, little elf in the garden who travels all over the world. I just re-saw the movie. I just love it. You know?
I mean, people have to prove that they went to see the Mona Lisa, but do they actually look at it? I haven’t even got a clue, you know.
Annie Sargent: They do look at it, but because there are so many people, you have to move [00:10:00] on, and there have… I went to the Da Vinci special exhibit in the Louvre a few years back, where they were showing all the analysis that they had done of the Mona Lisa, and the technique and all of that.
And it is a beautiful and interesting painting, don’t get me wrong, but it’s been spoiled, I think, by the sheer number of people who go, and I definitely would not say it’s, you must come to France just to see the Mona Lisa. That’s ridiculous.
Elyse Rivin: No, right. I mean, the fact is, there are a couple of other paintings by Da Vinci in the Louvre that are absolutely gorgeous as well.
Annie Sargent: Right.
And that’s the problem with being taken in by lists of things, is that because your attention goes to these places or things, attractions, I guess, then you’re going to miss out on other equally wowing things for you, that are unique to you.
So I, I would say, I mean, generally speaking, you do [00:11:00] you, right? You don’t need my permission to either go to the Mona Lisa or not go to the Mona Lisa. None of these things that we’re going to put on our list of wow places in France, is really, it’s not a dictate, like, but we think that these are interesting, beautiful places that please most people.
Let’s put it that way.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: So what do you have on your list, Elyse? I’ll let you carry it away.
Elyse Rivin: Oh, okay.
Eiffel Tower Surprise
Elyse Rivin: Well, considering that I just dissed the Mona Lisa, let me go and talk about the opposite side of the coin for me, which is also in Paris, because I find that it amuses me, I make fun of myself about this. I think it was my fifth or sixth visit to Paris that I finally went to the Eiffel Tower, okay?
I’m one of those people, in spite of everything and being a guide and all the rest of it, that personally, if everybody’s going someplace [00:12:00] and there’s all this hype, I’m mistrustful of what it’s going to be, you know, and figure out it’s, "Oh, no, this is going to be some kind of tourist scam" kind of thing.
Annie Sargent: Yes.
Elyse Rivin: But it happened that, this is already going back a number of years, anyway, it happened to be the year that I brought my mom to Paris. I thought, "Okay, you know, I’ve done the cruise on the Seine I don’t know how many times," and blah, blah, blah, blah. And my mom’s in Paris for the first time in her life, and she’s not young, and, you know, she was like, "Let’s do the Eiffel Tower." And I go, "Okay, Mom, let’s do the Eiffel Tower." You know?
Annie Sargent: Good!
Elyse Rivin: This is before you had to buy a timed ticket 5,000 months ahead of time anyway.
Annie Sargent: That’s not quite true, but okay, keep going!
Elyse Rivin: So anyway, so we went, and I said, "Well, as long as we’re going to go, we go up to the top." You know?
Annie Sargent: Ooh, very tippy top.
Elyse Rivin: Right up to the very, very tippy top.
Annie Sargent: Which you can’t guarantee that you’re going to get there, because if it’s windy or stormy or something, they won’t let you.
Elyse Rivin: Right. They won’t let you. My mother, I think, didn’t realize what was happening, because by the time we got to the second [00:13:00] elevator, she looked at me as if to say, "Why are you doing this to me?" You know? She was like, she had her back to the glass, so she couldn’t look out very much.
Anyway, yes, there were a lot of people. We got up to the very top. I don’t remember at all what day of the week it was, I just couldn’t tell you at all, we got up to the very top, and we got out there, and I looked out at the rooftops of Paris and walked around the 360 degrees, and I just went, "Wow." You know? This was, I thought, "Okay."
This is a case of you have to be able to do this once in your life. Just go up there and get this point of view out of… I mean, Paris is just beautiful as a whole, obviously there are neighborhoods that are not and neighborhoods that are.
But I thought, this is a lesson about the opposite of only going to the places that are wow lists from a guidebook or from podcasts, which is, don’t necessarily snob something [00:14:00] just because other people go to it, you see.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, that’s something that I say to people quite often, is just because it’s popular doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t go.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: Because it got popular for a reason.
And there are some of these things that really… Like the Eiffel Tower, I agree. I’ve never been to the tippy top.
Elyse Rivin: You’ve never been?
Annie Sargent: I’m scared. I’ve been up the Eiffel Tower several times, but not to the tippy top. I’m kind of afraid of heights, so I think I would, mm… I’m not sure how would I… I do. Like, maybe I should, huh?
Elyse Rivin: Well, it’s protected. You can’t fall.
Annie Sargent: Right. Right. Right.
Elyse Rivin: You can’t really fall off.
Annie Sargent: Thank goodness. Can you imagine people falling off the top? "Oh, we lost another one today."
Elyse Rivin: We lost another one today, right? No, but it is, I’ve only done that once, I have to say. And part of the reason I’ve only done that once is because you have to get online, you have to stay online, you have to buy a ticket and all the rest of it, you know?
Annie Sargent: Yeah. And like we said, you can’t do that every [00:15:00] day, so yeah.
Elyse Rivin: And you can’t do that every day. But really, I think for me it was a perfect lesson of the whole idea of you have to know and make up your mind yourself about what winds up being a wow thing to see or do, you know? And that one was just… It’s a lesson that I’ve kept in my mind the whole time, you know?
Old Paris Street Magic
Elyse Rivin: And the streets of Paris.
You know, I’ve lived short times in Paris and of course I studied French in school. I think this is true of other cities that people will go to and love too. When you have a big city, obviously, not every neighborhood is going to be wonderful to walk in, and not every neighborhood is going to be beautiful. But there is a kind of wow factor to old Paris.
Annie Sargent: The central arrondissements are stunning, for the most part.
Elyse Rivin: They’re stunning.
Annie Sargent: You do have the awful garbage piles now and then, but really it’s gorgeous.
Elyse Rivin: Let’s face it, you know, if you’re in the center, center, center, the [00:16:00] historic center of Paris, it’s magical. It really is, you know?
Yes, the stores become very predominant in certain neighborhoods and things like that. But if you pay attention to the architecture, if you pay attention to the different styles in terms of the history of the city and the narrow streets and everything, I don’t know. There’s… Maybe it’s just that there’s this magical charm that’s, you know… I mean, I’m not a fan of Emily in Paris, but…
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Well, it’s entertaining.
Elyse Rivin: …it’s entertaining, and it really does talk about the charm of the City of Paris.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Just this morning, I was browsing the news, as I do every morning, and I opened Le Monde, the app, you know, and I noticed for the first time ever that they, in between articles, they put in photos of Paris.
Elyse Rivin: Oh.
Annie Sargent: Random, beautiful photos of Paris, that have nothing to do with the articles. And I thought, "Huh." See? They just kind of inject some of Paris in their newspaper, in their [00:17:00] app. I’m going to pay more attention to see if it’s the same ones that I see every day, or if they change.
Elyse Rivin: Oh, that’s cool.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, it is cool, I thought, you know.
And Paris is very picture perfect. I mean, really, it’s… But it’s not the only city in France. We’ll talk about some others.
Elyse Rivin: No. It’s true. And of course, certain cities have an aura about them, let’s face it, and Paris is really one of them. And it just does.
There are neighborhoods I’ve never been in. I don’t know, you know, just…
Annie Sargent: Of course. Of course. When I write VoiceMap tours of Paris, I make a point of walking as many streets in that neighborhood as I can.
And even in those beautiful neighborhoods like the Marais or Latin Quarter or whatever, there are some streets that are unremarkable. Like, compared to the other ones, you have to choose which path, and really, you can choose a path. You can go, "Oh, yeah, this street here is more interesting than that one." Even in a city that has an incredible number of beautiful streets.
Elyse Rivin: Yes, I agree.
Annie Sargent: And I don’t know if, but by [00:18:00] comparison, we have other towns that have a high number of beautiful buildings. For instance, in the southwest, we have Sarlat-la-Canéda, and that has a very high concentration of Renaissance buildings and medieval things, and it’s just highly concentrated. And for a lot of people, that’s a wow place, it’s the concentration of things that makes it really… Because everywhere you look, it’s like a magic, like it’s, oh, wow, it looks like a movie set almost.
Elyse Rivin: You’re absolutely right. The Lot in general for me, I mean, as a department, but also the region, I mean, it’s kind of difficult to sort of decide where the Lot really ends and where other parts begin, but-
Annie Sargent: But Sarlat is in the Dordogne.
Elyse Rivin: Sarlat is in the Dordogne Department, but it’s an area that I associate with the Lot for some reason. That whole area around there. It’s just, it’s a gorgeous region.
Annie Sargent: Right.
Elyse Rivin: It’s a gorgeous area, and it’s true that Sarlat, which is a [00:19:00] small town, I think it’s 10,000 people at the most, I think, it is picture perfect. It really is, you know?
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah. The center is like, oh, wow.
Elyse Rivin: It’s very unusual in that way. You’re absolutely right. It’s really gorgeous. And the fact is, I mean, even in thinking about making a list of some of the things that we think of as being wow, it’s like you don’t know when to stop.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: So there are places, you know, and I was going, "Okay." I mean, I was… it’s weird because I sort of made a list myself of just sort of what came to mind, you know, that kind of thing, you know.
Annie Sargent: Sure, and that was the whole exercise.
Elyse Rivin: And it was like, yeah, and then I kept thinking, "Hmm, but then there’s this. Hmm, but there’s that," you know? So I think at some point, of course, we’re lucky, we really are lucky that France is really that beautiful.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, the whole country has so much, and we don’t have to go that far to explore new different kind of wow places.
Elyse Rivin: No.
Annie Sargent: And that’s one of the reasons why I think the podcast is never ending is because there’s so many.
Elyse Rivin: There’s so many.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, we [00:20:00] could dissect it every which direction and never get to the end of it.
Elyse Rivin: And there are places you’ve never been, there are places I’ve never been, there are lots of them, you know, it’s like I get…
But I think it’s because the scale of things in France, especially for people who come from Australia or the United States or Canada, it’s a different scale of things. It’s very deceptive because-
Annie Sargent: We’re a very wee country.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah, a wee… Oh, what a cute word. Oh. She’s gone Irish on me this morning. Okay. It’s a wee country. It’s kind of medium-sized. I don’t know if it’s wee, but it’s the privilege of France, and of course, there might be other countries, I’m thinking a little bit of Italy, but let’s stay, I mean, France, is that really you can go an hour and a half, and the region changes, the architecture changes, the landscape changes. It makes it so varied, and it’s not… All right. It’s a wee country. All right. I’ll accept the fact that it’s a wee country.
But it’s a wee country with lots of [00:21:00] wonderful little things. So, I guess what happened in my brain as I was trying to make this list is that I kind of did this in a, without thinking about it, almost historically in terms of places, the places that wowed me my first times or time in France, and then moving up more or less to, you know, the most recent, my most recent wow, that really was a wow. So, it’s kind of one of those kinds of lists.
(Mid-roll ad spot)
Pech Merle Painted Cave
Elyse Rivin: I know the next thing I put on, because it is also part of an incredibly wonderful memory that I have, and that is a place that we go when we do the boot camp, and that is the Cave of Pech Merle.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, that’s very nice. Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: And, it is a fact that for a very long time, I seriously thought I was going to devote myself to prehistory as a part of the world of art and art history.
It happens that it was by pure chance, my first big travels around France, roaming around, I was actually still an art student, so it goes back a [00:22:00] ways, by one of those combination of circumstances, I was traveling with a young woman. The two of us were just both sort of like traveling around, kind of going, "Oh, where are you going to go next?" Blah, blah, blah, blah kind of thing, and we met somebody who told us that Cahors and the region of the Lot was really beautiful.
And when we got there, it was in September, and this is going back quite a number of years. We met somebody, and both of us, of course, could speak French, and said, "Oh, if you get a chance to, if you can get out there, go to see this cave, this prehistoric cave, because it’ll close in a couple of weeks for the winter." You know, at the time, I don’t think it was, I don’t even know now if it still stays open all year or not.
Annie Sargent: I think they close for a month.
Elyse Rivin: A month.
Annie Sargent: January, perhaps.
Elyse Rivin: But it was, you know, it was one of those things where it wasn’t yet a big tourist attraction. I had no idea where I was going because that was part of my first big trip around France, was basically I let the wind kind of decide which direction to go in kind of thing, which is something that’s hard to [00:23:00] do when you get older. And also, I think the world’s not the same as it was those days. And we got a ride out there, and lo and behold, there was this guide there who took us down, and we were the only people, the three of us.
Annie Sargent: Wow.
Elyse Rivin: And it was such a wow. It was, you know.
Annie Sargent: Oh, yeah, the first painted cave you see, you can’t forget.
Elyse Rivin: You can’t forget, you know.
Annie Sargent: Whether it’s that one or other ones.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: But I think Pech Merle has a big advantage because of the setting where they’ve put the entrance. So you’re in this kind of plaza, but you’re surrounded by oak, and it’s all shaded, and you hear the birds. Because sometimes when… I go so often that I, sometimes I don’t even go in anymore because, I mean, they do limit the number of people who can go in, and for good reason. I’ve seen it, you know, 10 times. I don’t need to do this 11th.
And so sometimes I just sit and wait outside, and even the surroundings are just lovely, and [00:24:00] seeing the paintings inside is just wow.
Elyse Rivin: It’s wow. I mean, it’s also, it’s a huge cave. It still has everything that was really made. It’s not a reproduction. I have nothing against, we’ve been together, I’ve been other, with other people to Lascaux IV and all the rest of it. They’re extremely well done, and it’s still impressive, but there’s something about knowing you’re in the real cave with the real stuff, that was done that long ago that is very moving.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, I think… I mean, we have something like 62 or 63 painted caves in France and about that many in Spain again. I have seen some that were very small, where you have very few things to see, you know. But the biggies, Lascaux, Pech Merle, and oh, what’s the name of the one near Lyon?
Elyse Rivin: Oh, Chauvet.
Annie Sargent: Chauvet, La Grotte Chauvet. That’s also a reproduction. I think if you want to learn about the historical period and life in those days, the reproductions are better because you have more [00:25:00] time in the cave.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: Whereas, in the actual caves, they do move you along fast. The very first one I ever went to was Grotte de Niaux, and I’ve been to that one many times as well. And it was a wow moment, yeah. The first time you see a painted cave, you’re like, "Oh, my God, the people did this so long ago, it just boggles the mind". And I love taking people when I do day trips. About half of the day trips I do, I take people to Sarlat and Lascaux. We could do Pech Merle and Cahors.
But it depends. If they want to do more of the educational stuff, then Lascaux is better.
But the surroundings of Lascaux are, it’s a big parking lot with a big modern-looking building. I do point out where the cave was, the entrance of the original cave was.
I also saw the Lascaux III, which was the reproduction that used to be further up in the hills.
Elyse Rivin: Right. It was much different because it was a whole… Basically, you went into a hole almost. There was an entranceway with a little bit of cement, and then you [00:26:00] just literally went down into it, you know?
Annie Sargent: Right. Right. Anyway, it has changed over the years, and I understand the way they did it now, they can have more people, and it’s still a lovely experience. But it’s true that Pech Merle is out of this world.
Elyse Rivin: I love my ponies.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, you like the ponies.
Elyse Rivin: I love the ponies, yeah. I love the ponies.
A totally other kind of thing, again, this is part of my first real big trip traveling around France, so the wows. But interesting, it’s just, wows stay with you, huh? How’s that?
Annie Sargent: Yeah, they do.
Elyse Rivin: They do. Even if you go back and there’s this kind of warm feeling about them because after you’ve seen them a whole bunch of times, like going to Pech Merle a bunch of times or going to, you know, something else like a big cathedral that you’ve been wowed by, I think you have this warmth of the first wow that stays with you forever.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Brittany Wild Coast
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: The part of the Coast of Brittany.
Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm.
Elyse Rivin: I’ve seen a lot of it, [00:27:00] not all of it. I’ve spent a lot of summers in a small part of it, which is around the Gulf of Morbihan, and I think some people know from a couple of the podcasts.
But my very first trip to Brittany, I had read a book, I don’t remember what the book was, that talked about the landscape in Brittany, and I mean, I was, when I did this trip, I was in the midst of doing my master’s in art, and I was headed for the places that were the cliche places for painting and stuff like that. And then all of a sudden I became… I had this bug in my head that I had to get on a train and go to Brittany. And I did. And I wound up going to Quiberon.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Elyse Rivin: Which has what is called the Côte Sauvage. And of course now it’s much, much, much more built up than it was at the time.
Annie Sargent: But still well-preserved.
Elyse Rivin: It’s very well-preserved. And again, it was just one of those, the old style houses mixed with the new houses. One of the things about Brittany is that wherever you go, because the granite, [00:28:00] the gray granite houses are in the northern part, and the houses are not gray granite necessarily in the south, but one of the things that’s I find really admirable about Brittany in general is that brand-new houses, for the most part, not all of them, tend to replicate the old style.
Annie Sargent: Right.
Elyse Rivin: So that you have a consistency of kind of style when you look at things between the old and the new. You know, there’s still a lot of the old city centers like in Auray have like half timbering and stuff like that, but there’s something that’s very nice about that. It’s just, you know, they’ve kept it. And I just remember renting a bicycle, and at the time was able to, and going up and down the, kind of rolling hill parts of the coast around Quiberon and looking at it and thinking, "This place is just absolutely beautiful." And Brittany is really beautiful.
Annie Sargent: Oh, yeah, yeah. And as a child, I did a biking holiday around Saint-Brieuc. We had very much the same experience, riding around there [00:29:00] is just amazing. Or hiking is amazing. That’s a very natural sort of place to visit. It’s the natural wow of the sea and the coast.
Elyse Rivin: And the coast. And it is filled with beautiful villages of, you know, different places, and of course you have nice charming cities like Quimper and Vannes, which are also very lovely.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: But it was the nature itself that actually was so impressive to me at the time.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Next summer I’m going to spend a week in Brest visiting around Brest. I mean, the city of Brest is not beautiful per se, but there’s plenty around there that’s very nice.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: And I’m going to spend another week in Quimper, just looking around that area. And I look forward to it very much.
Elyse Rivin: I bet you do, and I can understand why.
Annie Sargent:
Loire Chateaux Wow
Elyse Rivin: Châteaux of the Loire Valley. Okay. There are how many of them? I haven’t got a clue how many.
Annie Sargent: About 400.
Elyse Rivin: Are there really?
Annie Sargent: Yeah, but most of them you can’t visit, they’re privately owned
Elyse Rivin: So, but my first big wow was [00:30:00] Chambord.
Annie Sargent: Well, yeah. I mean, the outside of Chambord gives everybody a wow.
Elyse Rivin: You know, everybody kept saying Chenonceau over the river and nah, nah.
Annie Sargent: True, true. Beautiful as well, yeah.
Elyse Rivin: True, true. Very beautiful. I had done Azay-le-Rideau. I mean, I did a whole bunch of them. But for some reason, what you’re describing is exactly what happened. I got to Chambord. It was the same trip, doing a whole bunch of them along the Loire Valley. I mean, I haven’t been back in a while, but it’s like coming out in front of the huge château and seeing the towers and seeing the double helix staircase and this setting that, you know, with this huge, huge, huge park and the forest in the background and everything, and it was like my fairy tale.
You know? I mean, I grew up reading fairy tales, and I thought, "Oh, here we are," you know?
Annie Sargent: So this is funny because when we went, my daughter was probably seven or eight, and my niece was 9 or 10, and we took the niece. And the niece, when we got there, niece [00:31:00] Manon, who lives in Greece now, just had a baby girl. She said, " Eh ben, c’est pas Disney ici, hein" Like, this is not a Disney castle, was her thing, this is the real thing.
Elyse Rivin: This is the real thing, right.
Annie Sargent: Because on the same week we had gone to Disney.
Elyse Rivin: Okay.
Annie Sargent: And so she, "Oh, ça, c’est pas Disney alors," hein?
Elyse Rivin: It’s funny because I was trying to figure out what it was having… It wasn’t the first of the châteaux that I visited, so it was not because of that. It was just what it looks like and the setting of it.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, it’s beautiful, yeah.
Elyse Rivin: It’s just absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, and then of course, you know, just with this double helix staircase and everything…
Annie Sargent: And you can kind of see it from the outside a little bit. It sticks out.
And okay, the inside of Chambord is a bit of a dud.
Elyse Rivin: It’s not like Chenonceau. They kept the furniture, where you could, you know, you can walk through, you can see where she lived, you can see, you know, all this kind of stuff.
Annie Sargent: Chambord is just [00:32:00] empty.
So walking up to the roof is impressive, and you can see all the surrounding. That I thought was nice. But the rooms of the château, eh, it’s empty.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah. I mean, I guess for whatever reasons, it’s not important to furnish in terms of, you know, some of the other châteaus.
Annie Sargent: Can you imagine the budget?
Elyse Rivin: Exactly!
Annie Sargent: They would have to find time pieces, you know, pieces of the time to… They can’t.
Elyse Rivin: Right. They pay a fortune to reproduce them anyway, you know. I mean, even for Versailles, half the furniture is reproduced to be exactly what it was, but it costs a fortune.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah.
Elyse Rivin: But that is a place where, now, this, because it’s going back a while ago, that was my first visit to Chambord. I’ve been back since. But stayed in little hotel at the time, which was affordable, on the property.
Annie Sargent: Oh, wow.
Elyse Rivin: And had dinner in the restaurant that was part of the hotel. And was able to sort of look at it at night with the lights on. So it was a totally magical experience.
Annie Sargent: [00:33:00] Wonderful.
Elyse Rivin: Let’s move it on. Move it on.
Annie Sargent:
Perched Villages Provence
Elyse Rivin: Cliche or not, the perched villages in Provence and in the Lot, the beautiful, old, historic, medieval villages made out of stone, whether it’s the white stone or the yellow stone or whatever, I mean, let’s sort of glop them all together because I don’t think there’s one particular one that I love more than others, except maybe Saint-Cirq-Lapopie.
Annie Sargent: Well, for me, Saint-Cirq-Lapopie and Gordes stick out. They’re the two for me.
Elyse Rivin: They’re the two. Okay. Okay. I mean, you’re right.There were a couple of others that I saw, too, some, two years ago when we were staying in the Luberon that I thought were also wonderful, but you’re right. But there’s something about these villages, that are from the Middle Ages, that are made out of stone, that are perched up on top of these hills, you know, the whole idea when you drive up and you see these things, that is like magic.
Annie Sargent: Yes. And as somebody who takes people there, the problem I have with it is once you’re there, the history is not as interesting as some other places. I mean, Saint-Cirq-Lapopie [00:34:00] anyway, it’s a wow place. You go to see it. You go to take photos. You go to enjoy the scenery, the sights.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah. The sight.
Annie Sargent: But the history is, well, there was a castle and another castle, it moved hands and, you know, nothing much happened. Like, it was boring place.
Elyse Rivin: Right. No, I think you’re absolutely right. I think the problem is to not expect long, developed histories about these, because basically there’s always a lord involved, there’s always a thing involved with the church and whatever. The histories are similar.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, they developed a craft of some sort.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: So it was leather in Saint-Cirq, you know. And that’s it. They made enough money to build these beautiful houses.
And stone houses.
Elyse Rivin: And live perched up on a hill, because in those days you wanted to have a defensive position.
Basically, you know.
Annie Sargent: So here you go. You have the history of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie.
Elyse Rivin: There’s more.
Annie Sargent: There’s more. But the lords, there were a succession of lords that lived there, but none of them did anything. They’re not famous. They didn’t do anything all that impressive, like, eh. No, because I was [00:35:00] looking for, like, was there a massacre or a disaster or a-
Elyse Rivin: No. It was just-
Annie Sargent: You know, like something that I, gory to talk about. Nope. Nope. Nothing.
Elyse Rivin: Oh, she wants gore. Okay. No, no gore. No gore. Just rich lords and craftspeople at the time, you know?
Chartres Cathedral Blue
Elyse Rivin: Stained glass in Chartres. Okay. Sainte-Chapelle, I know Sainte-Chapelle is fabulous, and I know you do it, and I know that you love it, and I’ve been to a bunch of the other cathedrals. I think I’ve been to all of them, but maybe not absolutely all of them. But there is nothing, absolutely nothing like the blue of the stained glass in Chartres.
Annie Sargent: If it’s a sunny day, you will love it. On a gray day, which happens a fair bit-
Elyse Rivin: It’s dark. It’s dark.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: I just saw a program two days ago, or three days ago, where they were talking about the glass in Chartres.
It was really the first to have these huge, enormous windows, even after the whole idea was developed in [00:36:00] Saint-Denis. But they talked about the blue, and it reminded me of what it was like the first time seeing it. But you’re absolutely right. I mean, it is a blue that’s made from ground cobalt, and on a gray day it looks dark, but it is just absolutely magnificent.
Annie Sargent: Agreed. Agreed. And all of, I think all of the great Gothic cathedrals that we have in France are just amazing. Beauvais is amazing. They’re all worth seeing. And if you love cathedrals as I do, really, it’s, for me, I could just go from one… like, all around the north of France. In the south of France, we don’t have those.
Elyse Rivin: No, we don’t.
Annie Sargent: In the north of France, you have such amazing cathedrals that you could do a theme, you know, just go from cathedral to cathedral, and I would be perfectly happy. I don’t think most people would be perfectly happy with that, but I would be.
Elyse Rivin: Yes. One of the courses I had to take at the university here was ‘A history of stained glass in the cathedrals’. It was fabulous [00:37:00] because we did every single one of them, and the differences between the different kinds of stained glass and all of them. But you don’t want to get me going on that, because that will take forever. Let’s move on.
Bayeux Tapestry Marvel
Elyse Rivin: The Bayeux Tapestry.
Annie Sargent: Ah, yes. That’s another beautiful one. But you can’t see it right now.
Elyse Rivin: No.
Annie Sargent: It’s being renovated. You won’t be able to see it till 2027, 2028.
Elyse Rivin: ’27 I think, but there was a big controversy about whether they should do this because it’s so fragile, you know?
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: Here we talk about an example of a work of art…
Annie Sargent: It’s not the tapestry that they are renovating, it’s the museum that holds the tapestry.
Elyse Rivin: I think they’re also doing some reinforcement of the background cloth of the tapestry.
Annie Sargent: Oh, perhaps. But I think it’s going to England. It’s going to be on display in England, in London.
Elyse Rivin: I think it is already.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, perhaps it is already.
Elyse Rivin: That was one of the reasons that, you know, the old, I mean, William the Conqueror, there’s still this rivalry between the two sides. You know, let’s face it.
So there were some people that said that if they send it to England, it won’t ever come back. You know, it’ll [00:38:00] come back.
Annie Sargent: It will.
Elyse Rivin: Honestly, I mean, I didn’t expect to have a real wow with this, and of course, part of it is that, we were just talking about this earlier. I mean, I have done some sewing, and I’ve done a little bit of embroidery, and of course, it’s not quite the same thing as painting, but still, when you take a look at this work, which was of course done by who knows how many different people, it’s 76 meters long. It’s embroidery on linen, and it is unbelievable.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, it is very stunning. It’s very worth the visit. And if you see it on a day when it’s not so busy, then you can take your time. You walk slowly, and you can look at the details and read the history and all that. So yes, agreed.
Elyse Rivin: It’s just incredible.
Alps and Pyrenees Peace
Elyse Rivin: Okay, so… And then my last two basically on my little wow list are really nature things, and one of them is a place I’ve talked about in a couple of podcasts, and that is, the valleys of the Tarentaise up in the Alps, which is, for me, a [00:39:00] place that represents peace and harmony and nature. Just nothing but.
I mean, it’s just, there’s a beauty there that I can never get over. Every time I go back, every single time I go back, I have the same wow. It’s just absolutely amazing to me. It just does something. There are other valleys in the Alps.
Now, of course, they’re all covered with three meters of snow, but there is something about certain valleys like this up in the Alps, in this part of the Alps, that it’s just a moment of sheer beauty and peace in nature and nothing else.
Annie Sargent: Well, and something similar for me is in the Pyrenees, it’s the Cerdagne.
Elyse Rivin: Ah.
Annie Sargent: I think it’s just gorgeous. It’s between France and Spain. You have Font-Romeu on the French side.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: God, it’s just gorgeous, that town, and all of the towns around there. If you have a chance to go do the Train Rouge, I think it’s the red one.
Elyse Rivin: Oh, I’ve never done that.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, I have. It’s amazing. It’s [00:40:00] amazing. You start at Mont-Louis, and you go all the way to Villefranche or Villeneuve de quelque chose.
Elyse Rivin: De Conflent.
Annie Sargent: De Conflent. That’s it. That’s it. And then you come back. You have to drive. You know, it’s a full day to do this, from Toulouse anyway.
Elyse Rivin: That sounds like fun, actually. I should do that one day.
Annie Sargent: Oh, it’s lovely. It’s lovely. And the Font-Romeu, just the view when you arrive, when you drive that area and you see Font-Romeu in the distance, oh, love it.
And the Cerdagne, the whole Cerdagne area…
Elyse Rivin: it’s beautiful!
Annie Sargent: … Gorgeous. Yeah. It is valleys, it’s vistas. Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: There’s something about valleys.
Durance Valley Alps
Elyse Rivin: And the last one, which is really something, the most recent, because this is actually from two summers ago, and that is the valley of the Durance River, which is the Alps of Haute Provence, okay? So we’re getting close to the border with Italy.
Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm.
Elyse Rivin: It’s the region that’s north of Nice and Antibes and things like that. It is mind-bogglingly beautiful. And the river itself is absolutely gorgeous. It’s all, you know, really rushing melted snow, [00:41:00] so it has this beautiful kind of pale green color, and lovely little villages around Briançon, which is incredible, Vauban fort anyway. And again, just a thing in nature, a place to go in the summertime that is just absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, you know?
Annie Sargent: Wonderful.
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Mont Saint Michel Reality
Annie Sargent: Okay, I’m going to add a few of my own.
Elyse Rivin: Okay.
Annie Sargent: I would say the Mont Saint-Michel is a wow destination.
Elyse Rivin: Ah.
Annie Sargent: But it’s often gray and milky sky. It’s not interesting visually much of the year, unfortunately, in my opinion. I’m being honest here, okay? I’m just telling you like it is. If you go on a sunny day, oh, wow. But if you are there on a cloudy day, it’s not the same. Just not the same.
Elyse Rivin: Which is probably why it’s on my great to see, but not wow list.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: Because I did go on a gray day.
Yeah, you’re right. It changes things.
Annie Sargent: Because the stone on the Mont [00:42:00] Saint-Michel is gray.
And so it all blends in together. It’s fuzzy. It’s not sharp. There’s nothing sharp about it. You can’t take a good picture of it. It’s eh, bleh.
But on a sunny day, it’s amazing. It’s just amazing. The abbey on top is also very interesting. The view is beautiful. But it’s mostly empty. There’s not much going on as far as talking about the life of the monks and the things like that.
So I think they need to, it would benefit from being more educational and less touristy, but I don’t know how they do that. I don’t know.
Elyse Rivin: I, okay, so I have a question for you, because I’ve gone twice, I think, maybe three times. But I have a memory, because the last time was a number of years ago, of being very difficult to get up to the top.
Annie Sargent: It is, it is rough.
Elyse Rivin: Unless you’re someone who runs uphill a lot, you’re not going to… You’re going to need a stop. And it’s cobblestone most of the way, [00:43:00] and you could do it in 15 minutes, but you have to be in tip-top shape to do that. Most people will do it in 30, perhaps 40.
Annie Sargent: And if you have any sort of balance problems or … hmm, yeah. Mm.
And definitely don’t take luggage up there. That’s like asking for trouble. Like, I don’t understand how everybody keeps saying…
Elyse Rivin: Oh, do people do that?
Annie Sargent: Yeah, because you have hotels, and they’re all convinced that, you know, it’s magical to be there at night. You can be there at night without sleeping there. Okay? You can totally go up. You can walk up and down. They never close the bottom. It’s not like medieval times when they close…
Elyse Rivin: They close the gates.
Annie Sargent: … the gates, and access denied, you know? Even if you stay at one of the hotels off the Mont Saint-Michel, a few kilometers away, like there, there may be like two kilometers away, you can totally see it.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: And you can go on the bus, even the buses run until midnight or something. I think that’s just BS that being on it is so much better. No, you [00:44:00] could… I mean, yes, being on it, but walk to it and enjoy it, and don’t go with your suitcase. That’s just me, but I’m just a-
Elyse Rivin: I can’t imagine going up those with a suitcase.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Versailles Visit Strategy
Annie Sargent: Another place that we didn’t mention, but gets a lot of visitors is the Palace of Versailles.
Elyse Rivin: Mm-hmm.
Annie Sargent: Which is kind of wow, but that’s a very cultural thing. For some reason, Asian visitors must go to the Palace of Versailles. They just love that place. It’s over the top in scale.
Elyse Rivin: Yes.
Annie Sargent: It has a lot of history. It’s worth doing, but take a full day. Don’t try to, you know, do, just do the hall of mirrors and out of there. That’s just the wrong way to do it.
Elyse Rivin: No, you’re right. I mean, Versailles for me is a place that’s interesting to go to, but it never wowed me, and I think it’s because I’ve been there probably 15 or maybe more times, and I’ve been there with groups, and I’ve been there on my own, and yet it’s never been a place that has been nearly empty. It’s always so overcrowded that it [00:45:00] stifles me.
Annie Sargent: No, I’ve seen it fairly empty, because I have a cousin who lives there, and he has a membership, so he can take me in.
Elyse Rivin: Ah.
Annie Sargent: So if I’m there off-season, he’s taken me in off-season, and it’s… it is nice. And if you do the tour of the private apartments of the king, that tour is worth it because they take you on a different path.
You get to see the really famous horologe, the clocks that Louis XVI loved so much. You see other things, and I would really recommend doing a private tour, a tour of the apartments, and you do it through thePalace of Versailles.
Elyse Rivin: A private tour.
Annie Sargent: Don’t do GetYourGuide.
Just do Palace of Versailles and get the King’s apartment.
Elyse Rivin: The grounds are gorgeous.
Annie Sargent: Yes. Again, it depends on the season, because if you go in the middle of the winter, eh, there’s nothing.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: It’s just grass. It’s half-dead grass. But if you go you know, at the end of spring or in the fall, yeah, it’s absolutely gorgeous.
Carcassonne and Memories
Annie Sargent: Another place we didn’t mention we should [00:46:00] is the Cité de Carcassonne.
Elyse Rivin: Of course.
Annie Sargent: That is wow, especially when you see it from a distance. So if you’re on the freeway and you get off, there’s a belvedere where, oh, wow, it’s nice.
Elyse Rivin: It’s true.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: It’s true.
Annie Sargent: Having experienced the fireworks there once now, I would say I’m never doing that again, because I was sick at the… I was very dehydrated and felt horrible, and there was nowhere to sit, or I didn’t think to drink. It was not a good experience for me personally, but I can see how people would say wow.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah, I mean, I put it on my great to see but not wow list, but then again, it’s because I have a very particular history, which is that I went to it on my very first trip coming through France before it was a big tourist attraction. And I stayed in the youth hostel up in the old cité.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah.
Elyse Rivin: This is when I was…
Annie Sargent: It’s still there.
Elyse Rivin: … as a graduate student, and it was very funky. Everything [00:47:00] inside the cité at the time, this is 35 years ago, was really relatively funky. And so it, it didn’t… I thought it was interesting, but I never got a wow from it because now, of course, I go back, I take people there all the time. I visited, I think I visited it about 30, 35 times in my life, probably more.
Annie Sargent: Oh, probably more for me. Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: But it’s true that it’s impressive, and I love it, but because I have this vague memory of my first impressions of it, it was creepy because it was, I was traveling. I was really, you know, off doing these weird things and I would… It was a very funky youth hostel.
And at night, walking around on the ramparts and everything. It wasn’t like now, I mean, everything is very commercial, and there’s all these wonderful restaurants and everything. So it’s kind of like, there’s always this little edge for me of like, "Is there going to be something out of a Tracy Chevalier book coming out at me someplace?" You know?
Annie Sargent: Yeah. But although when we go, it’s one [00:48:00] of the few places where when we go with bootcamp, we don’t do the castle and all that anymore. I mean, the bootcampers do because it’s their first time.
But we just go look at the stores and have a meal.
I kind of like the stores
Elyse Rivin: Yeah. I do too, actually. I do.
Annie Sargent: They’re kind of cute.
Natural Wonders Roundup
Annie Sargent: Anyway, Pont du Gard is another beautiful, beautiful place. Definitely a wow place for me. Like, oh, wow, when you see that, it’s… But there’s not that much else. I mean, if you are into Roman history and about the architecture of the Romans and how the whole water and the baths and all that, there’s a lot that can be brought into it, but just visually, it is stunning.
Elyse Rivin: That’s true. That’s true.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely stunning.
The Cliffs at Étretat
Annie Sargent: The cliffs at Étretat are also wow, I think.
But, you have to know that it’s a big problem because since the shows, what’s the name of the show? The Arsène Lupin.
He walks the cliffs, and everybody has now seen them, and everybody wants to go.
Elyse Rivin: And you’re not [00:49:00] supposed to.
Annie Sargent: And you’re not suppo- There’s a lot of stuff you’re not supposed to do. They get about 600 average, 600 visitors per day, and they all want to pick up a rock and take a souvenir home. That’s a lot of people. That’s a lot of rocks people are taking. Do not take rocks. Do not go where it’s dangerous, blah, blah, blah.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah, I’ve actually… Recently, somebody I think died because they went off the trail that you’re allowed to walk on, you know?
Annie Sargent: Yeah, they go off and they fall and they go, "Oh."
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: I’m sorry I did that. Too late.
The Dune du Pilat
Annie Sargent: The Dune du Pilat is also wow, especially from the top, but I would say it’s not an easy exercise, if you have bad knees, you will not enjoy the experience, even with the stairs. There are wooden stairs that are installed, semi-permanent wooden stairs that are installed every summer for, like, six months out of the year. It is beautiful, not easy walking in sand. And you have to walk a fair bit before you get to the climb. [00:50:00] It’s not easy.
Les Gorges du Verdon
Annie Sargent: Les Gorges du Verdon are absolutely wow. I’m hoping to go, see.
Elyse Rivin: If you go there, you really should go and see a little bit of the Durance because it’s not that far away, and it’s really part of the same area.
Annie Sargent: Yes, yes, yes.
Le Cirque de Gavernie
Annie Sargent: Le Cirque de Gavarnie in the southwest.
Elyse Rivin: I almost put it on my list too. Yeah.
Annie Sargent: And the great thing about that is that it’s not a very difficult hike. You can park at the bottom, and you walk, I mean, if you go all the way up, you know, you need to be a good hiker.
But you can do it with kids. You can do it with your dogs. And it’s really pretty. It’s a really pretty area. In the spring, it’s, you know… Right now, we’ve been pummeled with rain and snow, so it’s probably all covered in snow right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Elyse Rivin: I bet it is. I bet. Yeah.
Annie Sargent: L’Aiguille du Midi in the Alps, that’s a wow thing that you can do. You have, of course, and we’ve had a couple of episodes where it’s been mentioned at [00:51:00] length. I think it’s absolutely gorgeous, and you go up the L’Aiguille du Midi in the Alps.
Elyse Rivin: In the Alps? Thought the Pyrenees.
Annie Sargent: Well, there’s also one in the Pyrenees, yes.
And both are nice. Both are lovely.
I’ve been to both. They’re both lovely.
Rocamadour
Annie Sargent: Rocamadour.
Elyse Rivin: You love Rocamadour.
Annie Sargent: I love Rocamadour. The only problem is it’s so hard to get a good view in high season. In low season, I know where to go to take people to have a nice view on it, but… And I do take… This is one of the places I take people on day trips. But it’s best seen from a distance.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: And when there are a lot of people in high season, it’s really hard to park your car somewhere where you can see it from a distance.
Villages And Modern Icons
Annie Sargent: In the Strasbourg area, in the Alsace area, you have lots of absolutely drop dead gorgeous villages as well: Eguisheim, Colmar, that’s not a village, but there’s a bunch of them that are just stunning.
Eze, [00:52:00] near the Franco-Italian border, is also a beautiful, beautiful medieval village, a bit of a hike above Nice, It’s very nice.
In the southwest, we also have Collonges-la-Rouge, which is absolutely beautiful.
You didn’t mention… I mean, you mentioned the Mona Lisa, but you didn’t mention the Pyramid of the Louvre, which I think is, you know, the glass pyramid, I think that’s beautiful to see. It’s a modern icon. I think it looks gorgeous, especially in the evening when it’s lit up. I think it’s nice.
The Centre Pompidou, which is closed right now for renovations.
But that looks pretty striking. I wouldn’t say it’s wow must-see, but it’s very striking. It’s not something you forget easily. This is architecture, okay? I mean, a group of architecture. So the Louvre Pyramid, the Centre Pompidou, the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, that’s… The building is beautiful.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah, I guess these are places, [00:53:00] I think of what’s inside, and I don’t necessarily… the pyramid does not do anything for me. I mean, I don’t dislike it.
It doesn’t really have any effect on me. It’s interesting. I’m actually surprised.
Pompidou, I know so many people who hate it, that it’s… it’s kind of, like, tiresome to have to try and defend it to people, like the person that I live with at home. But I love that place, and I love the collection that it has, and I’m very sorry that it’s closed for a couple of years, but I know that they need to do some structural work on it. It’s very interesting. The Louis Vuitton Foundation, I visited it without it having a major collection, so it was very interesting to see the building. You’re absolutely right. The building is fabulous.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, the building is worth it by itself.
Food Wine And Markets
Annie Sargent: Let’s do a little bit of food and wine, just briefly.
Elyse Rivin: Oh, food and wine, mm.
Annie Sargent: Of course, champagne. If you like champagne, it’s very worth seeing the cellars,
the chalk tunnels, the bubbles, the [00:54:00] prestige sort of houses. I like it.
Elyse Rivin: If you go to Épernay, you can go just to Reims. I’ve done this with groups a lot. You can take a train and do a Reims aller retour. You can go on the same day and do…
Annie Sargent: And Épernay as well. You can go to Épernay on the train.
Elyse Rivin: If you really are into really champagne though, it’s worth not only going to Épernay but also getting a ride into the fields to see the beautiful rolling hills with the Chardonnay.
Annie Sargent: Right. Yeah, there’s tour guides that will do that with you and everything.
Elyse Rivin: It’s just gorgeous. It’s just gorgeous, you know?
Annie Sargent: Bordeaux, the city is beautiful.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: The hyper city center is beautiful. Also a lot of wine and things like that. The wine museum is worth it in my opinion.
Elyse Rivin: The Médoc area, have you ever done a day trip out into the Médoc area and visited some of the chateaus?
Annie Sargent: Once, but was I in the Médoc, or was I in another one? I can’t remember.
Elyse Rivin: It’s really quite nice to do.
Annie Sargent: Not Médoc. Médoc.
Elyse Rivin: Médoc.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, I said it wrong.
Elyse Rivin: It’s very beautiful, though. I mean, you [00:55:00] can really get to visit a whole bunch of stuff that way.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Lyon, where I’m going in March for a week, food culture is great, some great museums. I think I will enjoy Lyon. I’ve been there for a few days here and there, but I’m going to spend a whole week this time, so.
Elyse Rivin: You’re going to spend a whole week?
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: It’s a city I do not know.
Annie Sargent: Provence in general, the lavender fields, the light, the markets, those are wow destinations for a lot of people, honestly.
I’m underwhelmed by the markets because we have markets. Like, we have a lot of markets, and they’re not that different.
Elyse Rivin: No, you’re absolutely right. I was about to say, I think Provence is absolutely gorgeous. I think the villages mostly are beautiful, and they’re well taken care of. There are parts that are, of course, a lot more prized than others, like the Luberon, because it’s become extremely… You know, it’s for the stars and the rich and all of that, and it is beautiful, absolutely beautiful. But the markets can be very disappointing.
Annie Sargent: Well, I wouldn’t say they’re disappointing. They’re just same old, same old for me.
Elyse Rivin: I did two [00:56:00] weeks in the Luberon with my sisters, and my sisters are really into markets, so every single day we had to go find another market in another village.
And a couple of them were wonderful. Apt has the most incredible, absolutely incredible, huge, huge, huge market. It was the most fabulous market I think I’ve seen in the south of France. But there were others that were just nittly pittly little things, you know? It’s like, how many markets can there be, and how many times can you go to a market kind of thing, you know?
Annie Sargent: Right. So you have the guy that sells the hat, the guy that sells the olives, the guy that sells the tablecloths. Uh-huh.
Elyse Rivin: And then there’s the one who sells the nougat. My sisters got taken by that.
Annie Sargent: Oh, the nougat. Don’t get me started on the nougat. Do not buy nougat at markets. It’s a scam.
You will spend 100 euros on a teeny piece of nougat that you would have paid five euros somewhere else.
Elyse Rivin: Exactly.
Annie Sargent: Don’t do that.
Elyse Rivin: Don’t do that.
Annie Sargent: Just don’t do it.
Alsace Wine Route
Annie Sargent: The Alsace wine route is absolutely lovely and very fun to do, but you do need a car for that or a [00:57:00] tour guide.
Elyse Rivin: And having done it in the fall, in November, it’s just gorgeous because you have a late fall, the colors change, it’s just a divine thing to do.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s very peaceful and lovely.
Strasbourg, Annecy, Nice
Annie Sargent: Strasbourg, the city of Strasbourg, the hyper city center of Strasbourg is absolutely stunning. Loved it, really.
Elyse Rivin: It is beautiful.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Annecy is another one of these cities that has a beautiful city center. Must be seen.
Elyse Rivin: Very tiny.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Nice is very different. Nice is a big city, but for a big city, it’s great. Wow. You know?
Elyse Rivin: No, you’re absolutely right. It’s a wow city, in spite of there’s a certain horrible reputation that it’s only old people…
Annie Sargent: Nah, not really. No.
Elyse Rivin: … but it’s gorgeous. It’s just gorgeous. The old Italian part, the museums, the hills, it’s really beautiful.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Avignon is another one of these wow cities for me. I thought it was gorgeous. I love the Palais des Papes. I love everything about Avignon. I don’t know why. Love it.
Elyse Rivin: I haven’t been back in ages. I’m dying to go back and [00:58:00] visit it again.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah. Now, this episode is going to run long, but that’s okay. So be it.
Tourist Traps Warnings
Annie Sargent: Places that often get mentioned, but I think people need to be warned about a little bit, Montmartre, La Place du Tertre. Common complaints are, you know, aggressive kind of salespeople, aggressive beggars, aggressive people who are just going to try and put bracelets on you, whatever. It’s kind of not so much the Bohemian atmosphere that it’s made out to be.
Elyse Rivin: You know, I have never had that experience there, okay? I mean, I know it’s overcrowded, and I’m always aware of telling people to be careful of pickpockets, which I think is a reality. My take on Montmartre is that it’s… The problem with it is a little bit like the Mona Lisa. It’s like everybody wants to go, but they don’t know why they’re there, literally. And there are a couple of nice places to eat, but not necessarily on the big open square, du Tertre, because the last time I was there, which was only a few months ago, the food was not very good. It really wasn’t.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, go somewhere else. Yeah.[00:59:00]
Elyse Rivin: But there are lovely parts of Montmartre once you get off of the square.
Annie Sargent: Exactly, get off the beaten track.
Elyse Rivin: And it’s really nice.
Annie Sargent: Do my walking tour, my VoiceMap walking tour instead of just following the crowd because you’ll see a lot more.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Moulin Rouge
Annie Sargent: Moulin Rouge. People, you know, they’ve heard of Moulin Rouge, blah, blah, blah. They want to see Moulin Rouge, blah, blah, blah.
From the outside, it’s just a, it’s just a small building surrounded by sex shops and weirdness.
Elyse Rivin: Have you been inside?
Annie Sargent: No.
Elyse Rivin: Okay. I did once a number of years ago with a group. It’s a cabaret. It’s a cabaret. They do the can-can. You spend a lot of money to have very bad meal because you want to see the dancers do the can-can.
Camargue
Annie Sargent: Right. Okay. Camargue. La Camargue. So beautiful area, but you need a car or a horse or something because it’s big. People go for the birds, you know, go for the birds, but sometimes the flamingos are far away.
And they’re birds. They fly off, okay? That’s just how it is.
So you go to the Camargue, and you’re like, "Where are all the birds?" Well, they might be somewhere else for the weekend. Who [01:00:00] knows? And it’s very flat…
Elyse Rivin: It’s very flat, and you have to be careful of what season you go because there are mosquitoes.
Annie Sargent: That’s true. That’s true.
Elyse Rivin: You have to be able to go and deal with that.
Gorges du Tarn
Annie Sargent: So, another place is the Gorges du Tarn, which are very popular, but if you don’t hike or bike or something, you won’t get the most out of it.
Elyse Rivin: But that’s mostly true of all of the gorges, I think.
Annie Sargent: That’s true. That’s true.
Les Calanques Between Marseille and Cassis
Annie Sargent: Les Calanques, the national park, are also very popular, but people complain that it gets closed, when there’s a fire risk, they will close them, and they are right.
Elyse Rivin: Well, of course, but if you take a boat ride out of Marseille, it’s really incredible to see them.
Annie Sargent: Right, right, right. From the boat, yes, from the boat. Oh, wow, amazing, yeah.
Gordes in Provence
Annie Sargent: Gordes, beautiful scenic village. If you go in the height of the summer, you will die. Like, it’s awful.
It’s chaos. It’s chaos.
Elyse Rivin: It’s chaos. It’s chaos because there are too many people.
Annie Sargent: Right, too many people. Lots of souvenir shops, nothing much to do there. But you have to see [01:01:00] it. If you’re in France off-season, go to Gordes. If you’re in France in the high season…
Elyse Rivin: Visit other villages.
Annie Sargent: … I don’t know. Yeah, go to other villages.
Riquewihr in the Alsace
Annie Sargent: Riquewihr in the Alsace gets complained about because it’s Disneyland-like and it’s full of tourists. If you go in high season, it’s like wall-to-wall tourists, you know? That’s how it is.
Saint Paul de Vence in Provence
Annie Sargent: Saint-Paul-de-Vence, people say is upscale, but it’s kind of sterile.
Elyse Rivin: Well, it’s got a lot of art galleries, and not all the art galleries have great art now, but it was a place that was extremely important in the art scene for a long time.
Annie Sargent: I think it’s a place, it’s one of those villages that because it’s associated with certain actors and things like that, people think it’s a really great place to go. But what it is really interesting to go to is the Fondation Maeght, which is right next to it, which is a wonderful contemporary art gallery.
If you like contemporary art, it’s fantastic, yes.
Les Baux de Provence and Carrière de Lumière
Annie Sargent: Les Baux-de-Provence, beautiful as well, but touristy.
Elyse Rivin: Oh, it’s beautiful.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, but, in high [01:02:00] season, I don’t know. Oh, I don’t know.
Elyse Rivin: But it is spectacular.
La Tour Montparnasse Gets Complained About a LOT
Annie Sargent: La Tour Montparnasse. So the… People go to it because… Well, now it’s closed for renovations for a while, for several years probably.
Elyse Rivin: But, when you’re on it, it’s the only place where you don’t see it, so… you know.
Restaurants Near Any Major Landmark Are Meh
Annie Sargent: If you go to restaurants near major landmarks, usually you will not have great food. The reason is simple. These are places where they will have… they’ll be full every day no matter how bad the food is, so they couldn’t care less about the quality of the food. They’re just working on processing people as fast as possible.
But that’s true anywhere, near any big famous site that has visitors constantly.
The Champs Elysées
Annie Sargent: The Champs-Élysées is a bit of an underwhelming experience for me.
Elyse Rivin: In all the years I’ve been in France or have been to France, it’s undergone a lot of transformation. I find it extremely disappointing. I don’t understand why it’s called the most beautiful avenue in the world, [01:03:00] honestly.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: I like the Place de la Concorde.
Annie Sargent: They’re going to renovate and make it even nicer.
Elyse Rivin: The obelisk and the end of the Tuileries is just absolutely gorgeous. The view isn’t bad when you look up, but the Champs-Élysées itself, eh.
Large Group Wine and Food Tours
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Large group wine and food tours to me are a problem. Like, I’m sorry, but if you want to enjoy French wine and food, just buy some. You do not need someone to take you there and have someone serve you a sliver of this and that. Just buy something. I don’t know.
Elyse Rivin: One of my sisters likes to do, loves to do, food tours, but she does not, she doesn’t do group tours. She’ll hire someone who is theoretically in any particular place, an expert on food and wines.
And I think for some people who are not sure of what to choose, that is a good alternative. Not a big group, but when you get… there are some people who do really [01:04:00] good food tours.
Annie Sargent: Yes, there’s some, I’m sure. But why don’t you just ask, you walk into a cheese shop and you say, "What’s your specialty cheese?" Or, "What’s your most popular cheese?" And get a piece of that.
Elyse Rivin: Because you have to have a certain knowledge or assurance to do something like that. And I think that by having somebody give you some tips, you know…
Annie Sargent: Maybe they’re just intimidating.
Elyse Rivin: I think it’s just intimidating for a lot of people, you know? Yeah, yeah.
Mixed on Hop On Hop Off Buses
Annie Sargent: –
Okay, okay.I think the hop-on, hop-off buses are typically to be avoided.
Elyse Rivin: Why?
Annie Sargent: Because, if you know zero about a place, it’s better than not doing anything.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: But in Paris, you can do so much better.
Elyse Rivin: I don’t know.
Annie Sargent: Even the Batobus, the boat hop on, hop off, is way better than the buses.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah. You know, I don’t agree with you. I think that for people to do that, first of all, the concept I think is a great idea. I just did that in Barcelona, so I’m thinking of [01:05:00] that. I did it in Paris a long time ago with my mom.
I think for some people, it depends on how much time you have in a city, but I think it’s a good way of getting a vague idea of the geography of a city.
Annie Sargent: Well, you’re right, you’re right. If you don’t have a lot of time and if you know nothing about a place, it’s not a bad way to go.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: I think it’s just a way of sort of getting a feel of where to go in a city.
Instagram Travel And Wrap
Annie Sargent: And I would just end with this. There are a ton of tours that are getting organized just because of Instagram, so instagrammable places. We have tours in Paris that are just based upon instagrammable places. They will take you to take your picture in front of the instagrammable places.
Elyse Rivin: Just that, huh?
Annie Sargent: Just that. And they… No, it’s not just Paris, in Bali and the… Like, there are people who line up for three hours just to have the same photo as everybody else.
Elyse Rivin: Just to have their picture taken?
Annie Sargent: And [01:06:00] sometimes it’s not even what it looks like naturally, so they… Like, there’s this place in Bali where they have this arch, and it looks like a pond of water. It’s totally a visual trick.
Elyse Rivin: It’s kind of like the whole cliche of standing on the Trocadéro and holding up the Eiffel Tower on your hand.
Annie Sargent: Yes, yes.
Elyse Rivin: You mean people actually go and do trips like that just for that?
Annie Sargent: Yes, yes. There are people who just do that, they go around and… Like, it’s a whole bus tour, and for a day or two or three, they will take you around to all the instagrammable places.
Elyse Rivin: Oh.
Annie Sargent: I don’t, I’m not, I don’t travel like that. I don’t think you do either. I don’t think most of our listeners do either, but it’s a reality that these things happen.
Elyse Rivin: You think that’s more a young people thing?
Annie Sargent: Perhaps. But there’s not, there are plenty of young people who don’t get into the hype either, so it just, there’s a selection of people who just like to… You know, they want to curate a beautiful Instagram where they show that they’ve been to all these places, [01:07:00] and it makes them important, I guess. I don’t know.
Elyse Rivin: I guess it’s for posting afterwards.
Annie Sargent: Oh, yeah.
Elyse Rivin: That’s all it’s for, huh?
Annie Sargent: Yeah. And I would say there’s nothing wrong with posting your photo in front of this or that, but I hope that you try and get more out of it than just the photo. Like, don’t go just for the photo and then rush out to the next photo. That would be my thing, really.
Elyse Rivin: Well, that would not be our visitors.
Annie Sargent: That… No, no, absolutely not. I mean, our listeners want to go in-depth. Most of them are Francophiles. They know a lot about France. They want to know even more about France, which I’m very grateful for, because I happen to share the same love for the country. And France is hardly the only country that, where there’s plenty of beautiful wow places, obviously. We didn’t say this, but it’s obvious, right? You could do wow in anywhere in the world, really, really.
Elyse Rivin: I don’t know if you could do that many as you do in France, though.
Annie Sargent: You know when I saw a list recently of the castles. France has the most castles of anywhere [01:08:00] in the world.
Elyse Rivin: Uh-huh.
Annie Sargent: By a lot. Like…
Elyse Rivin: That doesn’t surprise me!
Annie Sargent: … We have twice as many castles as the next best. Like, so it was like 45,000 castles in France.
Elyse Rivin: 45,000?
Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, like, England had, only had, like, 28,000 or something.
Elyse Rivin: Only?
Annie Sargent: Only. Italy… Well, the thing is they probably had more, but they’re gone because they were built of wood.
Elyse Rivin: They’re all gone.
Annie Sargent: Germany had a ton, but they were built of wood, so they’re gone. Italy had a ton, as well, but the ones that are left today, so just, we didn’t mention many of the castles, but we have so many castles. It’s amazing.
Elyse Rivin: I was thinking Beynac, which is my, I love, but yeah, you’re right. We have so many castles. We have so many gorgeous villages. We have so much of everything.
Annie Sargent: So keep listening to the podcast. That’s it. And put them all on your list.
Elyse Rivin: And put them all on your list, and check them off, and then send us just your reaction.
Annie Sargent: And then come do a trip report with me, because I’m always looking for good people.
Elyse Rivin: Wow, [01:09:00] wow, wow. New wows.
Annie Sargent: Merci, Elyse.
Elyse Rivin: De rien.
Annie Sargent: Au revoir.
Elyse Rivin: Au revoir.
Copyright
Annie Sargent: The join us in France Travel Podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and copyright 2026 by Addicted to France. It is released under a Creative Comments, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.[01:10:00] [01:11:00]
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Episode PageCategories: French Châteaux, French Culture