I remember my first year teaching French. I carefully laminated beautiful pictures of France and placed them all over the walls of my classroom. I had never visited but had longed to for as long as I could remember. The emotion I felt during that first visit to Paris, seeing the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, visiting the Louvre and Versailles, it simply can’t be put into words. And to know that I had my children with me, excited to explore this beautiful city in a language that they also spoke, made our adventure so much more precious. While we’ve visited the city of lights twice, we long to return so we can explore beyond the ‘must see’ sights of my dreams.
But France holds more than Paris for those that long to explore. The Alsace region of France is wine country and home to beautiful, small villages that are often only seen in fairy tales. There’s also the Normandy beaches and Mont St-Michel, Provence and its lavender fields, the Loire Valley castles and so much more.