FRANCE Paris Provence French Riviera

I think I know the most beautiful parts of the transalpine country, namely Paris, Provence and the Côte d'Azur, I also had a nice winter holiday to ski with my daughter in the beautiful Megeve which is located immediately after the Mont Blanc tunnel. It is very suggestive like our Cortina d'Ampezzo, with sleigh carriages pulled by powerful horses, skating rinks and a beautiful historic centre. I took another holiday near Toulon, the large French military port but also a fascinating city, my daughter and I were guests in a summer center of an EdF (Electrictè de France) club in Le Brusc with a beautiful green island overlooking the coast living in contact with the gentle French and eating their culinary specialties. And then Provence visiting the beautiful island of Porquerolles, the Verdon canyon, with walls up to 1500 meters high and green waters in the river of the same name, Marseille, the second largest French city and large Mediterranean port near which I visited the Calanques national park , beautiful inlets of green and crystalline water with small sandy or stone beaches close to high eroded rocks after having walked around the old port and seen the panorama of the city from the Notre Dame de la Garde church. Some time ago I went with my ex-partner to visit Avignon, the capital of Provence, the city of the popes with the largest Gothic palace in Europe which hosted nine popes for a century until 1377, the year of the schism and then the beautiful Saint Benezet bridge over the Rhone river, among other things, Avignon enjoys the reputation of having the best cuisine in France, influenced by the needs of the popes. Arles, the city on the mouth of the Rhone with a beautiful amphitheater and famous for having inspired Van Gogh and Nimes, a nearby city belonging to Occitania with a large Roman arena-amphitheatre where concerts and once bullfights are held and then the Pont du Gard aqueduct , all 2000 years old. And how can we forget the vast plains where herds of wild horses and many varieties of birds and pink flamingos roam in the Camargue? stretching between the Mediterranean and the two branches of the Rhone. I was in Saintes Maries de la Mer where I saw a gathering of Roma gypsy communities flocking from all over to celebrate their patron saint Santa Sara. Paris is perhaps the most fascinating city in the world and the most visited, but a former colleague of mine passed away due to Covid who lived there for a long time and returned to Italy, he told me that Paris was beautiful only for tourists but not for those who lived there I didn't investigate, but I suspect the slightly temperate climate, the horde of tourists, the banlieues inhabited by frustrated young North Africans who occasionally unleash their anger involving the entire city are the causes of this poor liveability. I visited it twice, the first on an end-of-year and graduation school trip in 1969 and the second exactly ten years later in 1979 during a long car tour with my girlfriend at the time from Trieste to Paris passing through Salzburg, Munich, the Rhine Valley, the Netherlands and Brussels. I liked it a lot and it was also fatal in 1969 because I met a girl who then became my partner for over six months as in the end I left for the military and she went to have an au pair experience in London. I told this story in another post and I don't want to repeat myself because it doesn't bring me joy. In Paris we went to see almost all its attractions: the Eiffel tower, the Louvre museum, Notre Dame, Pigalle with the Moulin Rouge, the Crazy Horse but we went to see a can-can show in a less well-known and expensive venue. We were in Montmartre to see the artists' square and eat crepes and then the Sacre Coeur church from whose staircase I remember that at there was a young man playing the guitar and singing the songs of the then very well-known Neal Young, while the lights of the Ville Lumiere were turned on. Naturally we took a walk on the Champs Elisee to the Arch of Peace, we went to see Napoleon's tomb in the imposing Les Invalides palace, a trip to the Lafayette department store, one to a bistro in the Latin Quarter, one to the Place de la Concorde and of course in Versailles and it was Easter day 1969, while in 1979 I went to see the most distant and ancient castle of the French monarchs in Fontainbleau. Certainly there are regions of France that I have not visited and that would be worth seeing such as Normandy, Brittany, the Loire valley with its castles, Mont Saint-Michel and Corsica but who knows maybe I will go there in the near future.
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