Book excerpt: Get inspired and plan your next trip with Fodor’s ebook travel guide to France. Intelligent Planning: Discover all of the essential, up-to-date travel insights you expect in a Fodor’s guide, including Fodor’s Choice dining and lodging, top experiences and attractions, and detailed planning advice. Easy Navigation for E-Readers: Whether you’re reading this ebook from start to finish or jumping from chapter to chapter as you develop your itinerary, Fodor’s makes it easy to find the information you need with a single touch. In addition to a traditional main table of contents for the ebook, each chapter opens with its own table of contents, making it easy to browse. Full-Color Photos and Maps: It’s hard not to fall in love with France as you flip through a vivid full-color photo album. Explore the layout of city centers and popular neighborhoods with easy-to-read full-color maps. Plus get an overview of French geography with the convenient atlas at the end of the ebook. What’s Covered? Get to Know France: The Ile-de-France region is the nation’s heartland. Here Louis XIV built vainglorious Versailles, Chartres brings the faithful to their knees, and Monet’s Giverny enchants all. To the south, the Loire Valley offers a parade of royal and near-royal chateaus that magnificently capture France’s golden age of monarchy. Northwest Normandy is sculpted with cliff-lined coasts and a dramatic past marked by Mont-St-Michel’s majestic abbey, Rouen’s towering cathedral, and the D-Day beaches. Brittany, a long arm of rocky land stretching into the Atlantic, is a place unto itself with its own language and time-defying towns such as Gauguin’s Pont-Aven and the pirate haven of St-Malo. The region of Alsace-Lorraine may look and sound German, but its main sights---18th-century Nancy, medieval Strasbourg, and the lovely Route du Vine---remain proudly French. For those travelers looking to imbibe, trips to Champagne Country, the capital of bubbly, or Burgundy, whose vineyards are among the world’s best, cannot be missed. Lyon is France’s natural hub where you can ski Mont Blanc or take a heady trip along the Beaujolais Wine Road. Don’t forget Provence, famed for its Lavender Route, the honey-gold hill towns of Luberon, and vibrant cities. The pebble beaches and zillion-dollar houses of the French Riviera have always captivated sun lovers and socialites from amorous St-Tropez and beauteous Antibes, to sophisticated Nice. The southwestern region, The Midi-Pyrenees is less glamorous than the Riviera and Provence but has an array of must-sees including the “pink city” of Toulouse and fairy-tale Carcassonne. The Dordogne is a stone-cottage pastoral studded with fairy-tale castles, storybook villages, and France’s top prehistoric sights. You’ll fall under Basque Country’s spell with Bay of Biscay resorts like Biarritz, coastal villages such as St-Jean-De-Luz, or the Pyrenean peaks. Relax by sampling the wines of Bordeaux, the standard against which others are measured. They've made the city rich and the owners of its vineyards even richer. No trip to France would be complete without a stop in Paris. A quayside vista that takes in the Seine, a passing boat, Notre-Dame, the Eiffel tower, and mansard roofs all in one generous sweep is enough to convince you that this is indeed the most beautiful city on Earth. Note: This ebook edition is adapted from Fodor’s France 2011 but differs in some content. Additionally, the ebook edition includes photographs and maps that will appear on black-and-white devices but are optimized for devices that support full-color images.