85 Days in Europe — France

Nîmes is the capital of the Gard department in southern France. Modern development may be inevitable, but the blend of old and new has become one of the city’s defining features. Happily, its ancient Roman monuments remain remarkably well preserved—indeed, they are among the best-preserved of their kind.

Arles, a small town dating back to the Roman Empire, is best known as the setting of many Van Gogh paintings. Yet after visiting, it was the remarkably well-preserved Roman amphitheatre that left the deepest impression on me. Arles is such a charming, laid-back town brimming with art and culture that I could hardly bear to leave.

On my second day in southern France, I made the rounds of Gordes, the hilltop stone village; Roussillon, glowing red with ochre; lavender fields steeped in dreamy purple; and Fontaine de Vaucluse, where crystalline green waters reveal every stone below—assembling an entire painter’s palette along the way.

Avignon is a convenient first stop and base for southern France and Provence: a papal city with medieval walls, the Palais des Papes, the broken Pont d’Avignon, and the world-famous Festival d’Avignon.

On the first stop of my European adventure, I spent five days in Paris. The Eiffel Tower didn’t belong to any one day on my itinerary—it filled my memories of every day in Paris. Forged from rigid steel yet shaped with graceful curves, it appeared in moments planned, spontaneous, and wholly unexpected. Every day in Paris, I wanted at least one glimpse of it, eager to discover its many faces—by daylight, at sunset, and after dark—and watch its colours shift as the sun, nature’s great lamp, dimmed from bright to black and cast ever-changing shades across its structure.

A day with Paris’s two “saints”: Sacré-Cœur in Montmartre, where I dodged the notorious bracelet sellers, and Notre-Dame on the Île de la Cité, where a stranger showed me a gentler side of Paris.

Mont-Saint-Michel is simply too beautiful to resist. Some mysterious Western force practically compels you to come closer, and the way it shifts between being an island and part of the mainland is downright surreal!

Compared with the Louvre—a museum wrapped in French skin whose French soul has seemingly left the building—the smaller Musée de l’Orangerie and Musée d’Orsay offer a far more genuine chance to admire works by Impressionist masters who were either French through and through or spent the rest of their lives in France. And let’s set aside the rather painful question of those collections’ value for now (it is hard to reconcile the value placed on someone else’s cultural treasures with the price they paid for losing them, even after centuries). The simple fact that you are in France—and surely cannot miss the chance to experience truly French art and culture—is reason enough to add the Musée de l’Orangerie and Musée d’Orsay to your itinerary for a little cultural refinement.

Just when I thought I’d endured so many visual shocks that nothing could possibly faze me anymore, the Louvre in Paris showed me that France truly knows no limits. This house, decked out in gold and silver, holds the entire world within its walls—and conceals three women so captivating that people will lose their minds and travel from afar just to see them.

Starting at the Louvre and heading west through the Tuileries Garden, Place de la Concorde and the Champs-Élysées before finally reaching the Arc de Triomphe, these landmarks form a perfectly straight line through central Paris. This is the city’s Historical Axis, also known as the Voie Triomphale. Every stop along the way is a sight that people of all ages have heard about since childhood, and you can even see the Eiffel Tower from the riverbank. The Seine is practically more impressive than a Kinder Surprise.

On day two of my European adventure, the Palais Garnier proved the old saying true: “Without getting thoroughly lost, how could one ever savor the Palais Garnier’s old-world charm?” To see such a beautiful classical building, I first had to steel my resolve, exhaust my muscles, and circle the streets of Paris several times—truly earning the name “My European Travel Legs”! When Charles Garnier designed the opera house, he blended architectural styles ranging from Classicism and Renaissance Revival to Baroque. The result later became known as the Second Empire style, or Napoleon III style. After visiting the Palace of Versailles, one of France’s most opulent landmarks, the day before, I thought nothing could astonish me anymore. Yet I found myself utterly captivated by the Palais Garnier, with its restrained exterior and majestic, lavish interior. I had discovered my favorite building in Paris!

The Palace of Versailles is undoubtedly one of France’s most iconic historic landmarks. On the first day of my 85-day journey around Europe, I headed straight there as soon as I got off the plane. It felt as though I had been dragged sideways across the globe into another realm—from the present into history, from reality into a dream. At last, I had truly embarked on this journey!

At an information desk in an international airport, they could understand my question in English—yet couldn’t say even the most basic numbers in English? That convinced me the French really are “France-Q” through and through. Are French people genuinely arrogant? Do they really refuse to speak English? Perhaps speaking the local language in someone else’s country is simply the basic respect we visitors ought to show. I think I’ve finally cracked the art of handling France-Q.

After a brief half-day tour of Hanoi, Vietnam—a former French colony—it’s finally time for the main event: the European leg of my journey! First stop: France itself, a country with an undeniable connection to Vietnam (?!) and one of the nineteenth century’s great imperial bullies, powerful enough to decide the fate of other nations (drops pen! …drops mouse!). But as I researched the trip and cross-checked opinions from all sides, a pattern slowly emerged: “People who haven’t been to France fantasize about its romance and beauty; people who have been complain about its chaos and decay.” Sigh…this two-faced personality is so obviously Gemini (as a Gemini myself, I bow deeply in apology)! Still, Grandpa’s glasses are so dirty he mistakes his wife for his mother: you can’t believe everything until you’ve seen it with your own eyes, and you can’t judge the whole country by prejudice alone. This European adventure shattered many of my preconceived notions, and France was only the beginning. So how different is your France from mine?