France Travel Guide — Our Regions, Cities & Road Trips | Two for the Row'd
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🇫🇷 France Visiting since 2006 Our most-travelled country

France —
our home away from home

We've been returning to France since 2006, and at this stage one enormous page simply wasn't doing it justice. So we've cleaned everything up and split our travels into proper destination guides — from Celtic Brittany and the D-Day beaches to Paris, Bordeaux, Provence, Alsace and the Côte d'Azur. Pick the part of France you're interested in and jump straight into the full guide.

15
Destination
guides
20
Years of
trips
5
French
regions
#1
Country
we return to
🌊 Brittany → 🪖 Normandy → 🏛️ Lille → 🗼 Paris → 🏰 Loire Valley → 🎨 Dordogne → 🌋 Auvergne → 🍴 Lyon → 🍷 Bordeaux → 💐 Provence → ☀️ Côte d'Azur → 🙏 Lourdes → 🎄 Alsace
Explore our France map ↓ Watch our Alsace video ↓
France travel guide Brittany Normandy D-Day Paris Loire Valley châteaux Dordogne caves Provence lavender Côte d'Azur Alsace wine route France from Ireland
🗺️ Interactive mapFrance since 2006

Explore the France we've travelled

From Brittany and the Normandy coast to Paris, the Loire, Bordeaux, Provence, the Côte d'Azur and Alsace, this is our France story on one map. Tap any marker to see the destination and jump straight into its full guide.

Northwest Paris & Central South Alsace
01
Where we went
Fifteen guides. Five regions. One country worth returning to.

Each corner of France we've spent time in now has its own dedicated travel guide — full stories, photos and practical notes. Tap through to whichever region matches the trip you're planning.

Region 01 · North & West

Brittany, Normandy & Lille

01🌊
Brittany
Plancoët, medieval Dinan, elegant Dinard and the Celtic side of France that feels surprisingly familiar to Irish visitors.
Open Brittany guide →
02🪖
Normandy
The D-Day beaches, cemeteries, wartime history and Mont Saint-Michel — one of our most memorable French regions.
Open Normandy guide →
03🏛️
Lille
Flemish architecture, the Grand Place and a northern French city with a character completely different from Paris.
Open Lille guide →
Region 02 · Paris & Île-de-France

Paris — plus Disney

04🗼
Paris
Our full Paris page — the landmarks, neighbourhoods, museums and the version of the city that keeps bringing us back.
Open Paris guide →
05🏰
Disneyland Paris
A separate guide for Disneyland Park and the newly transformed Disney Adventure World, including World of Frozen.
Open Disneyland Paris guide →
Region 03 · Central France

Châteaux, caves, spas & volcanoes

06🏰
Loire Valley
Fairytale châteaux, elegant gardens and one of the best parts of France for history and architecture.
Open Loire Valley guide →
07🎨
Dordogne & Lascaux
Prehistory, countryside and the extraordinary cave art that takes France's history back thousands of years.
Open Dordogne guide →
08🌿
Vichy
Belle Époque architecture, thermal spa heritage and a complicated twentieth-century history.
Open Vichy guide →
09🌋
Clermont-Ferrand
Black volcanic stone, the Auvergne and the ancient volcanoes of the Chaîne des Puys.
Open Clermont-Ferrand guide →
10🍴
Lyon
Vieux Lyon, traboules, Fourvière and the food culture that gives this city such a strong identity.
Open Lyon guide →
Region 04 · South & South-West

Wine country, Provence, the Riviera & the Pyrenees

11🍷
Bordeaux
UNESCO-listed architecture, the Garonne, Cité du Vin and the vineyards of Saint-Émilion beyond the city.
Open Bordeaux guide →
12💐
Provence
Lavender fields, villages, markets and the slow southern-French road-trip atmosphere we absolutely loved.
Open Provence guide →
13☀️
Côte d'Azur
Nice, Cannes, Mediterranean glamour and an easy hop across to Monaco.
Open Côte d'Azur guide →
14🙏
Lourdes
The Sanctuary, Grotto of Massabielle, basilicas and a very different France beneath the Pyrenees.
Open Lourdes guide →
Region 05 · Eastern France

Alsace & Colmar

15🎄
Alsace
Colmar, the Wine Route, colourful half-timbered villages and the French-German blend that made this one of our favourite recent trips.
Open Alsace guide →
02
Why we keep going back
Twenty years — and France still doesn't feel "done"
"Every region seems to have its own food, architecture, landscape and personality. That's exactly why we keep returning."

France has been part of our travels since 2006. We've done the famous sights, but some of our strongest memories are the smaller ones: driving through Brittany with no fixed plan, standing quietly on the Normandy beaches, wandering through villages in Alsace, seeing Provence in bloom and stopping for food in Lyon simply because somewhere looked good.

Being able to speak French has also changed the way we travel here. It makes the small conversations easier, gives us more confidence away from the obvious tourist trail and has helped turn France into somewhere we feel genuinely comfortable returning to.

03
Watch our latest France trip
Colmar, the Alsace Wine Route & those fairytale villages

Our most recent France trip took us through Alsace. Here's the full video from the trip.

Colmar in December ✨

Read our Alsace guide →
04
From the archive
France in pictures

Twenty years of France means a fairly chaotic camera roll. Here are a few from the archive.

Two for the Row'd travelling in France France travel memories — Two for the Row'd France trip in 2014 — Two for the Row'd France travel archive — Two for the Row'd
05
Plan your own trip
Explore France with TourRadar
Multi-day tours TourRadar

Want someone else to organise the route?

If you'd rather have the itinerary, transport and major arrangements brought together for you, these TourRadar trips cover several of the French regions featured in our guides.

🌊

Brittany & Normandy

Explore two of northern France's most distinctive regions on one multi-day itinerary.

View tour on TourRadar →
🍴

Lyon & Beyond

Start with Lyon and explore more of France through a wider organised itinerary.

View tour on TourRadar →
🍷

Côte d'Azur, Burgundy & Alsace

A broader France itinerary linking the Riviera with wine country and the villages of Alsace.

View tour on TourRadar →
🏰

Loire Valley

Explore the château country of the Loire Valley as part of an organised multi-day tour.

View tour on TourRadar →

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Day trips & activities

Looking for something shorter?

Use GetYourGuide for individual experiences, day trips and activities. For the most relevant results, the individual destination guides above are the best place to start.

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06
Common questions
France FAQ
Where have you visited in France?
Our trips have taken us through Brittany, Normandy, Paris, the Loire Valley, Dordogne, Vichy, Clermont-Ferrand, Lyon, Lille, Bordeaux, Provence, the Côte d'Azur, Alsace and Lourdes, as well as Disneyland Paris. Use the destination cards above for the full individual guides.
Is France good for a road trip?
Very much so. Some of our favourite France experiences came from having the freedom to stop in smaller towns and villages between the headline destinations. The best region depends on whether you want coast, history, wine country, mountains or cities.
Which guide should I start with?
Start with the destination you're actually considering rather than trying to read France as one enormous itinerary. That's why we've split this page into individual guides.
Do you have a separate Disneyland Paris guide?
Yes. Disneyland Paris now has its own page rather than being buried inside the general France or Paris content.
Vive la France ✨

Pick a region and start exploring

This page is now the hub. The detail lives where it belongs — inside each destination guide.

Browse France guides ↑ See all our destinations →

Affiliate disclosure: if you book through our links we may earn a small commission at no cost to you. We only recommend places and experiences we've been to ourselves.