Maybe you can’t travel here. But you can begin fantasizing about your next visit. One stop to consider: Chartres. We visited this city about an hour southwest of France over the winter holiday which is known for its artistic bent and the spectacular stained glass windows of its Notre Dame Cathedral (La cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres). I’ll write more about this soon. The photo above is just a glimpse.

All that snow got me thinking about the Pyrénées. It’s still unclear whether we’ll be able to get up there this year. But I’ve been thinking about an amazing week we spent in the Pyrénées in March 2019 that included a hike along the Pont d’Espagne. Located at about 1,493 meters up, the Pont d’Espagne was once upon a time a trading route between France and Spain. Located in the Pyrénées National Park in the Hautes Pyrénées Departement, the valley now is a pastoral wonderland in the summer that leads to Lake Gaube. But in the winter, it’s another world where people…

The ski season in France may be gutted, but I still can’t stop thinking about a trip to the mountains. Maybe the forced separation has made me even a bit more obsessed. I had a chance to speak with some local tourism officials during a two-day conference last week to get the scoop on regions I have yet to visit. Those destinations now on my list include La Clusaz, a ski resort village in the Haute-Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. It’s nestled in the corner near the Swiss and Italian borders, and just to the west of the more renowned Mont Blanc.…

My list of places to visit in France after the pandemic has been getting longer each week. But the Gouffre de Padirac in the Lot Department still remains near the top. Plunging 103 meters underground, this chasm features a series of wild geological formations that are the result of a subterranean river gradually sculpting its limestone surroundings. Visitors can descend by an elevator and a series of steps and then wander the labyrinth by foot and by guided boat. The visit features the Salle du Grand Dôme, a 94-meter chamber big enough to fit the Notre Dame Cathedral.

France’s Louis Pasteur may have played a key role in fostering the science of vaccinations, but these days his compatriots rank among the world’s most fervent anti-vaxxers. With Covid-19 vaccines starting to be approved, the French government faces a monumental challenge convincing enough French to get vaccinated to develop the necessary herd immunity. Failing to do so could not only slow a domestic economic recovery, but the country could find itself isolated if other nations refuse to allow travel to and from France. Such a scenario would be devastating for the nation’s tourism industry which is already limping after 9…

The French Parliament has taken the first steps toward approving a law that would ban discrimination based on a person’s accent. Violations could be punished by a maximum of 3 years in prison and a fine up to €45,000. This will no doubt bring a sense of justice to the large number of people in France who speak with regional accents but often feel a sense of disdain in a country dominated culturally, politically, and economically by Paris. According to Ouest-France, an IFOP poll in January 2020 found that 16% of French people claimed to have been the victims of discrimination…

The appointment of Jean Castex as France’s new prime minister by President Emmanuel Macron this summer launched a flurry of political analysis by the nation’s chattering classes. But it also left many in the nation’s capital shocked because Castex has a Southern accent. In France, there is officially one right way to speak French and it’s hammered into kids throughout their school years. To deviate from this even in the slightest marks you as a “provincial,” or someone from the provinces, aka, everywhere that is not Paris. France has numerous regional accents, ranging from Brittany in the Northwest to Marseille…

To find a reason for optimism about the summer tourist season that starts next week in France, just pay a visit to the Maison D’Orride in the country’s southwest province of Béarn. Didier and Marina Monteil fled Paris several years ago to buy a stone farmhouse where director Roger Vadim and his then-wife Jane Fonda once filmed “La Curée” (“The Game is Over”) in the 1960s. After the couple painstakingly transformed it into a thriving Bed & Breakfast, it gained a national reputation thanks to the vintage décor of its rooms and traditional dinners such as hearty daube stew and…