From its golden Mediterranean beaches to its Alpine peaks, France thrills and captivates. Paris is a decadent visual feast, a city where style is as sacred as Notre-Dame’s bells. Parisians have finessed the art of genteel lounging, their glasses filled with the best of Burgundy or Champagne – regions whose vine-covered hills roll away to the south and east.

Deep in the Pyrenees, medieval fortresses stand over mountain streams, while from Normandy’s misty shores, Mont Saint-Michel rises like an Arthurian dream. Neighboring Brittany, its gaze turned to its fellow Celtic nations, is a land of cider, prehistoric wonders and wild, craggy shores. There is Provence, a study in lavender and terracotta, spreading across the Rhône like a watercolor, all the way to the Camargue, where wild horses thunder through Europe’s largest delta. The Dordogne’s ancient villages creak with half-timbered houses, watching over riverbends like dozing fishermen. The cities are proud, passionate characters, much like the French themselves: Bordeaux is as elegant as its claret; Lyon’s stoves simmer with pots of boeuf bourguignon; Nice sits pretty on the Côte d’Azur, its Riviera neighbors, Saint-Tropez and Cannes, every bit as glamorous as in their 1960s heyday. Explore the country at a languid pace, drifting along its fabled waterways on the shaded sundeck of a bespoke barge. France will seduce, enchant and leave you desperate for more.