Planning to stay the month of October in France. Wishes: Small town with public transportation (bus, trains). Interests: art, food/cooking, history, music. We are old but active wanderers, and this may our last international trip.
From another post we realize that the exact area/location is not terribly important because the food and wine are exceptional throughout the country.
As this will be in October, perhaps you can choose a south destination : Provence, Bordelais or near Toulouse by exemple.
You might consider Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. It's small, but big enough to have some of the things of interest you mention. In particular the ancient Celtic/Greek/Roman ruins at Glanum on the edge of town, and the asylum where Vincent Van Gogh spent time late in his life are worth seeing.
I've always driven my car there, so I'm not familiar with transit offerings, but I would imagine if you wanted to go to some of the other places in the area (Avignon, Aix-en-Provence, Arles, Marseille, Cassis, etc.) you would have to first take a bus to Avignon, so there probably would be a good time commitment -- for example if you had an interest in taking a piloted boat tour to see the Calanques from Cassis (highly recommended, by the way, if the weather is good), an overnight stay in Cassis before you take a boat in the morning probably would be needed.
It sounds as if you've had good luck with restaurants. I would characterize food in France as uneven. There's good, and there's not so good. In my view, it can get a bit monotonous outside of the diversity of large cities because many French restaurants are stuck in tradition. Some love that, but after a while, one wishes for a bit more variety. At least there are regional variations, from the Charolais beef of Bourgogne, to the Germanic offerings of Alsace, to the cheese and seafood of Bretagne and Normandie, and so on.
October is the month when everything changes. The weather goes from nice to rain, the attractions start to shut down from tourist season, the harvest if finished and the trees are brown. Not that you can't have a good time, but you may have to get a bit wet.
While not small towns, if you have any interest in le Grand Est, I'd suggest looking at Dijon or Nancy. Both cities are easy to walk, and have good rail connections. Nancy has more art, being the home of Art Deco, Dijon may have an edge for food. I could easily make a case for an extended stay in either.
If you stay in Nancy, and haven't been to Trier, make a point to do so. It's a fairly quick train ride.
Just a quick note that Dijon is not in le Grand Est but in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. It was, in fact, the home base of the powerful Dukes of Burgundy. Very good Musée des Beaux-Arts.
I was going to suggest a town in Burgundy and think the Dijon suggestion is excellent, even if it’s a city. October is grape harvest time in Burgundy. The Saint Remy suggestion is excellent, too. I was just there for lunch a couple of weeks ago. It’s charming. Aix-en-Provence would be a city not too far from Saint-Remy that you could consider. It has more transportation options for day trips with both a rail line and several types of bus services.
I agree with Bob about food. It’s all fairly new to you, but he sees the repetition that I see particularly in the lower price ranges. A lot of food in the low-price range comes from giant wholesale distributors.. At a minimum of thirty euros and up, you get chef-made meals that may have more variety. Use the Michelin or Gault & Millau food guidebooks for suggestions of better restaurants of various of prices.
Just a quick note that Dijon is not in le Grand Est but in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté.
Thanks, Bob. I lose track of the borders.
I would suggest Lyon. We are returning for a second visit as the resistance museum was closed (and the primary reason we had gone)
for renovations. There is good public transportation, the Lyon card is a bargain (with an excellent free tour), direct train from CDG, hundreds of Traboules to be discovered, excellent Lugdunum Gallo-Roman Museum and Théâtre, short river cruise available, Notre Dame Basilica ,Confluence Museum (which we will visit this fall) and many other small museums. It is consider the "Gastric" capital of France. If you do go, I highly recommend the book A Woman of No Importance. Lyon was the center of the Gestapo during WWII, thus all the traboules! You could easily continue on to Aix-en-Provence or St. Remy.
From another post we realize that the exact area/location is not terribly important because the food and wine are exceptional throughout the country.
So we used to think...
On a RS trip one of the stops was in Arles. A few people joined us for dinner at a restaurant on a delightful square. One of them had to send their meal back for rewarming, parts of it were still cold. Turns out that some "restaurants" in France serve industrially prepared food they buy frozen, then thaw and serve. According to https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/10/28/home-or-readymade-french-restaurants-forced-to-reveal-food-sources it may be up to half of all restaurants!
