Temple of culture, cuisine, fashion, snobbery, and cheese, France comprises an extraordinary mosaic of tiny villages, walled medieval cities, seamy ports, and sophisticated Paris. The politically astute Charles de Gaulle, WWII Resistance hero and French president during much of the post-war era, summed up the French spirit with the words, "France cannot be France without greatness". Galling as this statement may be, it testifies to the pride which the French feel for their land.

No matter how many times you've seen it in pictures, your heart will skip a beat when you first glimpse Mont-StMichel rising out of the water. Built painstakingly over several centuries on a tiny island, the abbey buildings represent an imposing tribute to monastic solitude. The island monastery first came into existence in the 7th century, when a gigantic wave swamped the forest of Sissy, isolating the Mont from the mainland. The stone structures, built painstakingly over nine centuries on a tiny island, are a mixture of major continental styles of architecture from 966, when the Dukes of Normandy founded the Benedictine Abbey on the ruins of an 8th-century chapel. The crowning bronze statue of St-Michel was added in the 19th-century to oversee the green Norman and Breton countrysides, as well as the swiftly shifting tides which sweep over the sand flats of the coast.

Angers

Guarding the western gateway to the chateau region, the massive stone walls of Angers once daunted potential attackers of the Dukes of Anjou. Angers retains only the stem chAteau and cathedral from its illustrious past as the Plantagenets' capital. Home to the magnificent 14th-century Tapisseries de l' Apocalypse, a 75-panel representation of the book of Revelation, this city of 200,000 raptured inhabitants makes a fitting conclusion to a Jamesian tour of chateau
country.

Nantes

In Nantes, as is so many of France's respected grandes villes, the stately gray buildings have served as the backdrop for events both grisly and grand. Best known as the pulpit from which Henry IV proclaimed religious freedom for Protestants in the 1598 Edict of Nantes, the 15th century cMteau also contained the infamous Marechal de Retz, who was executed for sacrificing several hundred children in grotesque rites and inspired the Bluebeard legends. Today Nantes bears much resemblance to Paris, with public parks and gardens, a river flowing through the center of town, and wide boulevards marking the boundaries between admiuistrative arrondissements.