France
France seduces travellers with its unfalteringly familiar culture, woven around cafe terraces, village-square markets and lace-curtained bistros with their plat du jour chalked on the board.
France has been home for two decades yet I still feel on holiday – French art de vivre (art of living) is just too good. From my Haute-Savoie house on Lake Geneva's southern shore, the Jura's dark-green hills and un café in the wisteria-draped village bar are my wake-up call. Weekends of endless possibilities punctuate the gentle rhythm of village life: art museums in Lyon and Paris, Alpine hiking and skiing, paddle boarding on the glittering lake, road trips to Beaujolais and Burgundy and other regions so different they could be another country. France’s sheer variety is amazing.
