France: The Art of Living,
Practised Daily

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The most visited country on Earth, and still capable of surprising anyone who thinks they already know it.

France is a country that treats pleasure as a serious discipline. Its gastronomy sits on UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list, which is a formal acknowledgement of something the French have never doubted: that how you eat is a part of how you live. The same instinct runs through the châteaux of the Loire, the light on the Côte d’Azur, and the fact that Paris put its finest museum inside a former royal palace.

The range is what surprises people. Versailles and the Loire châteaux are the architecture of absolute monarchy; Lyon, at the confluence of the Rhône and the Saône, is the gastronomic capital of the country and one of the largest Renaissance districts in Europe; the Riviera is Mediterranean in climate, cooking and temperament, with medieval villages like Èze and Saint-Paul-de-Vence perched above the sea.

At Finders & Keepers Safaris we travel France privately and by TGV, with licensed guides in each city, and we plan for the things that actually make a difference — the Louvre before the Mona Lisa scrum forms, a Loire day that takes in three châteaux without exhausting anyone, and lunch at the inn where Matisse and Picasso paid their bills in paintings.