France 2026

First afternoon of the trip, straight out into the vines east of Bordeaux.

Saint-Émilion is small, steep, and built out of the limestone it stands on, which turns out to be the whole story of the place. The church is cut down into the rock rather than built up out of it, and the cellars run under the streets in every direction.

I did two tastings, one up at a château out in the vines and one down in the cellars beneath the village. If you only do one, make it the underground one. Go on a weekday if you can, because the lanes fill with tour groups fast.

Five days here, and the base for everything else in the southwest.

Bordeaux is small enough to walk end to end and the trams cover whatever is left, so most days started without much of a plan. Rue Sainte-Catherine runs the length of the city and I ended up on it over and over, though the lanes either side are where the better half of it is hiding.

The food is the thing. Every kind of cuisine, and a standard even at the cheap end that is hard to explain to anyone who has not eaten here. Les Halles Bacalan across from the Cité du Vin for a bit of everything, Le Michel's for the onion soup, and CONNOR'S on more evenings than I planned.

Between meals: the Miroir d'Eau at Place de la Bourse, the Quinconces and its monument, the botanical garden over the Pont de Pierre, and one evening out at Château Lauduc with the tables set at the edge of the vines.

A day out on the peninsula, with the Dune du Pilat on the way.

Cap Ferret is wooden oyster cabins painted in every colour, the basin on one side and the Atlantic on the other. Lunch was oysters at one of the shacks with the beds sitting out in the water in front of me, which is most of why they taste the way they do.

The municipal market is worth the earlier start. Crates straight off the basin, sold by the dozen with a lemon and a knife, and a counter where you can stand and eat them on the spot.

A short stop on the way down the coast, and the start of the Basque country.

Biarritz is cliffs and surf and grand old seafront buildings left over from when it was a resort for royalty. The walk out to the Rocher de la Vierge is the thing to do with an hour: a rock stack off the headland with an iron footbridge across to it, and the coast running away in both directions.

Up La Rhune on a wooden rack train that has been grinding its way to the top since the 1920s.

It climbs at walking pace for about half an hour, with ponies and sheep wandering across the track in front of it. The top is the whole Basque coast at once: Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Biarritz, and the beaches running north into the haze, with Spain over the other shoulder.

Take water and food up with you. The café at the summit is pricey and will not refill a bottle.

Down off the mountain and into Saint-Jean-de-Luz for the rest of the afternoon.

A working fishing port that happens to have one of the best sheltered beaches on this coast, tucked inside its sea walls. Tall Basque houses in red and green around the harbour, and the church where Louis XIV was married just back from the front.

The end of a long Basque day, at a guinguette on the river.

Tables under the trees looking over the water, a big range of food and drink, and exactly the right place to be as the light goes.

A quick stop at the fort on the way along the coast.

Socoa guards the western end of the bay at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, sitting out on its own breakwater with the Pyrenees coming down to the sea behind it. Ten minutes and a few photographs, but a good ten minutes.

Over the border for the day, and the best eating of the whole trip.

San Sebastián is forty-five minutes from Biarritz and the food alone justifies the drive. The old town works on its own rules: a couple of pintxos and a drink at one bar, then move on to the next, and keep going. Get used to not entirely understanding what is happening at the counter.

I drove up Monte Igueldo first, which puts the whole of La Concha below you in one curve with Santa Clara island sitting in the middle of it. The old funicular is the better way up, though: set the GPS to the station at the bottom rather than to Monte Igueldo, or you will drive all the way to the car park at the top and miss it, as I did.

A stop in Bayonne on the way back north.

The cathedral is the reason to pull in: Gothic, twin-spired, and taller inside than the narrow streets around it prepare you for. The old town along the Nive is worth a wander afterwards if you have longer than I did.

Back through Bordeaux for one night, on the way to the train north.

Long enough for lunch at the rôtisserie on Place Fernand Lafargue, which I had already been back to more than once.

Three days in Paris, arriving by train from Bordeaux.

I did the obvious things and did not regret any of them. Montmartre on the first afternoon: up through Abbesses, with its Art Nouveau métro entrance still standing, the wall of I-love-yous in the little square behind it, past the Moulin Rouge, and into Sacré-Cœur for the glass before standing on the steps for the whole city. The Eiffel Tower that same night, lit gold, and then properly at sunset the next evening, with the top shut for wind so I only got one level up and took the stairs to get there. Notre-Dame, the Arc de Triomphe and the Institut de France from the outside this time, all worth it for that alone. The best view of the tower turned out to be from Pont de Bir-Hakeim, with almost nobody on it compared to the Trocadéro, and the best view of Sacré-Cœur from the free rooftop terrace of Galeries Lafayette, which nobody mentions.

The eating was the other half of it: bone marrow and bourguignon at a proper bouillon in Pigalle, Neapolitan pizza off Étienne Marcel, sushi for a last lunch, and one long dinner at Biche on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré that was the best meal of the trip.

Canal Saint-Martin I could have skipped. Pretty enough footbridges, but nothing you would cross the city for, and the grey weather cannot have helped.

A full day at Disneyland Paris, opening to close, both parks.

Main Street first thing before the crowds build, the Studios through the afternoon, then back over for Hyperspace Mountain at dusk once the whole place has its lights on. It rained on and off all day and it genuinely did not matter, though a jacket beats an umbrella when you want your hands.

Not a half day. You will walk a very long way.

Back in Bordeaux for the last four days, which is how a loop should end - the same city, but knowing it this time.

The first stay was working out where things were. This one was wine, deliberately and almost entirely: an hour with a sommelier that taught me more than anything else on the trip, and everything I drank afterwards was better for it. Nothing else was rushed - long lunches, an afternoon out in the vines, evenings on the sand by the river with the rope swings going in the plane trees.

Four days is the right length for a city you have already met. Get someone to explain the wine to you early on - it changes everything you drink after it.

A day in Marseille, which is rougher round the edges than the rest of the south and far more interesting for it.

The Vieux-Port is where everything runs from: masts and superyachts side by side, the fish market at the top end in the morning, and Notre-Dame de la Garde sitting on its hill above the lot. Le Panier, climbing away behind the port, is the best hour on foot in the city: steep lanes, pastel walls, pale blue shutters and washing out of the windows, and it goes quiet the moment you leave the main drag. The Pharo gardens at the harbour mouth are for the view back across the water to the striped cathedral, and Plage des Catalans, just around the corner, was packed end to end on a Tuesday afternoon in May.

Driving in Marseille is its own event. Narrow streets, scooters everywhere and nobody indicating. Park it and walk, or take the metro.

Into Hyères late, after a full day in Marseille, for the first of three nights on this stretch of coast.

Nothing to report beyond a very good pizza eaten out of the box, which is the right way to arrive somewhere you are going to be for a while.

The calanques by boat out of Cassis, which is the way to see them.

You leave the harbour under Cap Canaille, the great ochre cliff that stands over the town, then turn west along a coast that is all white limestone and pines. Port-Miou first, a long narrow inlet with yachts moored nose to tail and the old quarry cut into the rock above them, then Port-Pin, then En-Vau, where the cliffs close in to a slot of blue water with a needle of rock at the mouth and a cave you can put the bow into. Five or six of them from the water in a couple of hours, and every one a different colour of blue.

Cassis afterwards is small and pretty and busy, worth an hour in the lanes and an ice cream on the port. Book the boat ahead in summer; the small ones go further in than the big ones.

Back into the city at the end of the calanques day, for Notre-Dame de la Garde in the evening light.

It is all about the view: the whole city and the port below, and the Frioul islands and the Château d'If out in the bay. Go late in the day, when the coaches have gone.

The best day of the Provence leg, and most of it was spent on the water.

The drive out to Giens is worth something on its own - a spit of road with salt flats on one side and open sea on the other, and wind coming across it every time. Then half a day on a catamaran, anchored off Porquerolles to swim, which is how I saw the island: from the sea, with pine coming down to the sand, rather than by going ashore. Back to an outside table by the water in the evening.

Take more sun cover than you think. There is no shade on a boat and the wind hides how much you are getting.

An hour in a hilltop village on the way up the coast.

Bormes is the Provençal postcard done properly: narrow lanes climbing between stone houses, flowers over every wall, and the sea a long way below. Small enough to walk in an hour, and worth pulling off the road for.

A stop made almost entirely for the name.

What is left of the popes' summer castle is not much, but it stands above the vineyards with the Rhône valley spread out underneath and, on a clear day, a very long way of it. Worth pulling over for if you like a good red, and it is more or less on the way north.

A night out past Saint-Étienne, nowhere near anyone's route.

I came for one of my best mates, and was glad I stayed. The restaurant was worth it on its own: frogs' legs for the first time, râpées, which are the local speciality and should be eaten here, and a table outside in good weather.

The last few days, back in Bordeaux, and by this point I had stopped sightseeing and started just living there.

A pool in the afternoon, the Cité du Vin catching the light in the evening with the moon already up over it, and one night at a guinguette on the bank of the Garonne - wooden tables set out on sand under the plane trees, everyone drinking outside until the sun went down through the leaves. Three bottles open across the stay that were worth writing down: a Château Marjosse white, a Margaux from 2021, and a Sauternes.

A good way to end a trip. Would go back.