Travel with university age children outside of Paris

Any person old enough to go to university is no longer a child. The French certainly don't think so; university students are regarded as adults, if sometimes somewhat obstinate ones. Your daughter can do the planning too, especially on the Internet. If you treat her as an adult, you both could get more out of your joint vacation.

You don’t have to go as far from Lyon as the Loire to find a great place to visit. Do you plan to rent a car? If so, you have so many options. There is a lot to see in Burgundy besides the wine and great cuisine. To add to Bob’s list: I really liked Autun. It’s a town, not a village, but you can walk to the Roman sites scattered about the town and it has a great church. Autun would make a good base. RS covers some other Burgundy sites. I wouldn’t miss the museum at Alise Sainte Reine about Julius Caesar’s defeat of the Gauls.

If you don’t get a car, I would stick to easier to reach destinations like Beaune and Dijon or Arles/Avignon/Nimes.

I'd get an apartment in an outer arrondissement in Paris and then do some day tripping to small towns in the region. Senlis is a lovely medieval town easily reached from Paris. Auvers sur Oise where Van Gogh breathed his last is a great day trip. Moret sur Loing and Crecy la Chapelle, both delightful. There are many chateaux; Vaux le Vicomte is our favorite, but there is also Fontainebleau, Malmaison, Sceaux, Ecouen, Maintenon, Chantilly etc all easily reached from Paris in an hour or so. Then there are the small cities like Rouen, quite different from Paris in architecture and Reims for the Champagne houses.

Burgundy, Alsace and Brittany all are possibilities. When we did a side trip last spring from Paris we went to St. Malo for 4 nights and Auray for the neolithic sites for one -- it was pretty wonderful and St. Malo is well connected with public transport to nearby towns.

Wonderful suggestions! I'd never heard of the neolithic sites at Auray and hadn't even considered CERN. For this trip, Dijon and the Dukes, with a home base in Autun, sounds excellent, with day-trips from Paris on my list for another time as I go there once in a while for work. Daughter is studying French literature and history of the 1800s and I love Medieval history, so Paris - Burgundy should keep everyone happy. Thank you very much; adding a theme to the trip and narrowing things down is extremely helpful.

I liked Burgundy very much and would add to the chorus recommending it. Lots to see and do besides food and wine (not that there's anything wrong with being well nourished while you're sightseeing). We based in Beaune, with a car, and our favorite places were Semour, Vezelay, Alise, Fontenay, Autun, and Dijon.

I was interested to learn that the three major river systems of France -- Seine, Loire, and Rhone -- all originate in Burgundy. That made Burgundy a crossroads for western Europe in the days of horse and water travel. I think it helps explain the region's historic importance and the power of its dukes. And why winning at Alesia was so key to Caesar's conquest of Gaul.

Plus, located neatly between Paris and Lyon, Burgundy meets your "not racing around" criteria.

Kate: If you have a car, you might want to do what my wife and I did after visiting Lyon. We researched some charming villages in the book on MOst Beautiful Villages in France, and made a tour of them, booking B&B's either in the villages or nearby. Took lots of back roads. It was a marvelous trip. Peter

I wonder how big " Juli " would have fared against the Huns, or the Mongols, or against Hannibal, or even against Parthians had his assassination not intervened.