Whenever we vacation in a new part of the country, we always book accommodations in a central location in the area that we’re going to explore. That way it’s easy to make day trips to the surrounding destinations and still be back “home” in time for an apéro and dinner. Staying near the train station has at least 2 advantages: you don’t have far to go to catch your train for your day out and the station is often close to or in downtown near the sites you want to see in your base city. A third advantage in Poitiers, at least, is that the station is multimodal; that is, you can catch a train, a long distance bus, or the city bus, all in the same location. For this trip that was important because 2 of the towns we were going to visit are served only by motorcoach. More on those starting next week but first we wanted to discover the “City of a Hundred Steeples”.

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Earlier we wrote a post about the cost of visiting different countries that ranged from 7€ a day in Laos up to 300€ and more in the Caribbean. Western European vacations fell somewhere in the middle and blog reader Rich took on the challenge when he saw that in France the price would be 178€ for food and a place to sleep. His enthusiasm inspired today’s subject that revolves around finding a good deal or making them ourselves. Because all of our US to France vacations always started and ended with nights in Paris, that’s where we got our introduction to the words “good value”. 

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We walk everywhere. Without a car, that’s a given, but then we intentionally chose a city where we could easily get to all of our daily needs on foot. A new hometown also had to have an efficient local bus system plus a train station that could give us access to other cities in France and all over Europe. The monetary savings were apparent immediately: no car payment, insurance, fuel, maintenance, parking fees, tolls, cleaning and detailing. No stress of fighting for a parking place, dings and scratches, parking or speeding tickets, theft. What we hadn’t considered were the health benefits and we just read about how to make that even better.

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Thank you, Sally, for the link to an article in The Telegraph entitled, “France’s 20 greatest villages, ranked and rated.” British journalist Anthony Peregrine lives in Montpellier and has been reporting on France for over 20 years. His articles offer insights into French life, history, and travel as does this one we’re highlighting today. What I liked especially about this story is that he says it covers, “French villages that I get most excited about returning to.” Glancing down his list, there are a few that we’ve been to so we’ll add some photos from those trips with information about new locations to discover.

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There’s an online travel information source called “Global Wanderlist” who describe themselves as, “We’re here to fuel your wanderlust with detailed destination guides, must-see attractions, hidden local gems, and travel tips that help you explore more and stress less.” As the company name suggests, they publish lists covering worldwide vacation spots to help you narrow down the choice of where to visit, when to go, plus some tips to make the journey even more enjoyable. They are headquartered in India so their Bucket Lists favor itineraries for that country with intriguing names like Mysore, Spiti, Sikkim, and Lucknow. As exotic as those sound, my attention was drawn to their recommendations for France.

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