Places to visit in France

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Have decided France for 2025 holidays- please give me your favourite places. Not keen on Paris but happy to go anywhere else.
Provence?- although maybe a pain to get to?
Bordeuax? Brittany?
Some ideas please of nice places for a break.
No kids re the holiday, so don’t need to worry about family activities.
Thanks!

Corsica.

Beautiful beaches and also lots of good mountain walks.

A bit expensive but worth it. Best time to go is June or September when it is not too hot and touristy,

Oh, I would love to see Arles!
Love these ideas….

Also La Rochelle is a good shout…. takes me back to school days as it was always in the textbooks :)

Aix en provence and anywhere in the Luberon- menerbes, gordes, bonnieux

Bordeaux is a great city but if you want to get out to Cap Ferret or the Dunes du Pilat or elsewhere in the Bassin d’Arcachon it is tricky without driving.

l’île de Ré is glorious, and a short hop on the bus from La Rochelle airport (then hire bikes to get around everywhere when you’re there, be sure to book bikes in advance unless out of season…in which case check carefully what’s going to be open).

You could fly to Aix-in-Provence and also visit Avignon and Marseille (Marmite but I say YES) by train, plus Arles, and even Nîmes or Grasse (lavender fields) are not too far. For exploring the villages in the région, you would need to hire a car, however.

We love Occitanie - really interesting mix of Spanish and French cultures. Lovely beaches, not too touristy - cities like Perpignan, Montpelier, Nimes, Beziers etc.. are recommended.

Sete is our favourite place ever - a beautiful fishing town nestled right on the Med and full of canals.

Nice is fab. Fly in, get the tram then spend some of your days jumping on and off the train in the small seaside towns as well as Cannes and Antibes and Monaco if that's your thing. We loved it all and will be returning.

We always go by train from London and find getting around without a car fine (although there have been some comical rural bus journies!).

If summer then I would head for the west coast rather than the south as it will be a little cooler. La Rochelle is great with a lovely harbour and historic shopping area and you can visit the Ile de Re (sorry can't do the accents on here!) and the marshes etc.

Further north in Brittany, the walled town of Dinard is lovely and close enough to Mont St Michel for a visit.

I love Aix en Provence but wouldn't go in summer. Annecy is beautiful but gets really busy in high season. Carcassone is another interesting place, but again hot and busy in high season.

I have mainly visited by car, but the trains are excellent and in many ways are the best way to travel, but it can be difficult to avoid changing stations in Paris.

I love these suggestions thank you.
I wonder if I can see La Rochelle, Brittany and Dinard all by train once I’m there….

We went to Provence last year - stayed in Eygalières near St-Rémy, about an hour's drive from Marseille airport. Absolutely beautiful around there and the food is out of this world, albeit quite pricey. There's some good Roman stuff to see if you're interested in that sort of thing, great vineyards and the Van Gogh connections are fascinating. Would definitely recommend 🙂

Just seen that you won't be driving - train is possible from Avignon I think!

Second ALL of this!

This all sounds great! I’m thinking for next trip- fly to Marseilles and then public transport to Provence region. St Remy sounds interesting👌

I stay in an airbnb in Nice as in my mind, Nice is a better base to move east and west along the coast by bus or train.
But Antibes is fabulous - as is Menton

St Malo is lovely and easy to get to. Walled town, by the sea. Mont St Michel is nearby although I'm not sure how you'd get there without a car. Dinard nearby is a nice town too.

Nice is a good base and it's easy to visit other towns in the area.

If you fancy Provence we had a lovely holiday last year staying just outside of Aix-en-Provence, well placed to visit lots of beautiful places. We went in early August in a heatwave and for us it was too hot which impacted on how much we could explore - had to get up early and then back for lunch or head out late afternoon/early evening. We flew into Marseille.

I love Provence, and lived in Antibes for a while many years ago, but a lot is going to depend on when exactly you’re going, and how well you tolerate heat — high summer can be very hot.

Epernay - a town where all the champagne houses are - was beautiful and really interesting. Would be great without kids and a good stop over location on the way down to the south. I’m not sure how public transport is to get to the town as we went by car, but once you are there you wouldn’t need a car.

Disney Land?

We loved the Alsace this summer. Colmar is one of the most beautiful places I've been to. It's close to the German border and we visited Germany and Switzerland on the same trip but did have a car.