Côte à Côte

Enjoy some free time in Paris.

Travel to Normandy.

Just over the coastal bluffs, in Colleville-sur-Mer, lie the 9,387 military graves of the American Cemetery. The endless, crisp rows are poignant reminders of heroic days that changed the outcome of World War II.

Stop on the cliff that overlooks the landing beach of Arromanches to watch the impressive Normandy's 100 Days, an HD film with surround sound that's presented in a circular cinema. It places spectators in the middle of the Battle of Normandy, thanks to archival footage.

Proceed to the medieval harbor known as la Cité des Corsaires for famous native seafarers such as Surcouf, who captured countless English ships, and Jacques Cartier, who sailed to the New World and up Canada's St. Lawrence River in 1535. Saint-Malo is perched on a rock at the mouth of the River Rance, its only link to the mainland a narrow causeway.

Enjoy the ride through Normandy.

As you get closer to the site, see how the Mont Saint-Michel rises out of the sea mists, its spired abbey church perched upon a rocky island set in a tidal bay.

On your way up the hill for a visit to the abbey, you will walk along steep streets filled with tales of pilgrimages and of prisoners who were once kept on this small island.

On the way back, spend some time browsing in the village's souvenir shops. Have a look at the surrounding seabed, a flat sandy expanse at low tide, where incoming tides are said to rush in as fast as a galloping horse.

Vineyards color the roads of the region the French call Val de Loire and Jardin de la France. For UNESCO, it's an Outstanding Cultural Landscape.

Enter the largest of the Loire Valley castles (440 rooms and 80 staircases). At the age of 25, King François I decided to build a sumptuous residence, and he did. However, over the 32 years of his reign he only spent 42 days at Chambord!

Today, visitors marvel at the park (enclosed by a wall 18 miles long), at the grand façade, and at the famous Double Helix Staircase (Grand Escalier), which leads to a roof adorned with 200 chimneys!

Let the 3D and virtual reality technology of your HistoPad Chambord fill up castle rooms as they were in their heyday, back in the 16th century, while you listen to automatically triggered commentaries.

Continue to the City of Light.

A lunch allowance is included today.

Today, there's the excitement of a ride on a Train à Grande Vitesse (no clickety-clacks on these smooth rails), from Paris all the way to Nice. Time flies aboard the streamlined cars which, inside, look and feel like an airplane.

Enjoy some free time in the Côte d'Azur today.

Make your way to the SNCF station to board a train bound for the glittering Riviera city known as Le Rocher (The Rock).

An extraordinary hilltop site clothed in flowering bushes belongs to Grasse, the international hub of the parfumerie industry. Tons of orange blossoms, rose petals, jasmine and lavender flowers, and others, are processed each year in and around Grasse. A large proportion of the perfume bottles sold throughout the world contain essences distilled there. Fragonard is the name of the town's largest parfumerie and of its most renowned citizen, the 18th-century rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard.

Visit the Fragonard factory to see the process of distillation, absorption and extraction of perfume essences. Hear about the esoteric artistry of the "nez."

Discover a village celebrated for its high-perched setting typical of the fortified towns that once guarded the kingdom of Provence. Saint-Paul-de-Vence can boast about its nearly intact medieval ramparts and its famous resident artists, such as Modigliani, Bonnard, Chagall, and the American writer James Baldwin, who died in St. Paul in 1987.