Travel guide to France – planes, trains, automobiles, bikes and boats!

Travel around France and you’ll discover a land of legendary landmarks known all over the world – from the Eiffel Tower in Paris to the blooming lavender fields of Provence. Around 90 million visitors arrive in France each year making it head and shoulders the most visited country in the world. They are seduced by the culture, the history, architecture, food and wine, they are beguiled by the many pleasures of France, and once is never enough. And it’s not just visitors that love to visit France, staycations are popular with the French, with some 80% taking holidays in their own country.

In France you will never run out of things to see and places to visit. World class art, magnificent architecture, more than 40,000 chateaux and fortresses, glorious beaches, snowy mountains, historic cities, picturesque villages – there is just so much to fall in love with.

And when you’ve ticked off those must-see sites on your list – the Palace of Versailles, Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, a dazzling little island that makes you feel you have stepped back centuries, the Louvre, the world’s most visited museum and the sun-kissed French Riviera, the boulevards of Paris and the majestic castles of the Loire Valley – there are a million more thrilling sites and places to discover. Prehistoric caves, troglodyte villages, the steep cobbled streets of Saint-Emilion in Bordeaux, the medieval town of Annecy in Haute-Savoie and Claude Monet’s house and garden in Giverny, Normandy…

But now let’s look at travelling in France:

Travel guide to France

Travel in France isn’t just about how you get from A to B. France has such a diverse landscape and so many pleasures to experience. When you travel from the sea to the mountains, and discover France in diverse ways from sailing on the Seine on a cruise from Honfleur to Paris like the Normans in the Middle Ages, or by exploring the canals of Burgundy or Provence and visiting the many sites that have shaped its history.

Travel in France by car

The French travel en voiture, by car, mostly. France has a very good road system with auto routes you along – at a cost of course. Between the middle of July and the middle of August the roads are considerably busier than usual as this is the prime time for French holiday makers to get away, as well as peak tourist season. There’s even a website called Bison Fete which monitors and reports on how busy the roads are.

If you ever drive in France, you’ll notice that the French are obsessed with roundabouts, rond-point in French. A whopping 30% of all the traffic roundabouts in the world are to be found on the roads of France. The very first one in the world was at the Place de l’Etoile (Star Square), now called Place Charles de Gaulle, on which sits the historic Arc de Triomphe, commissioned in 1806 by Napoleon Bonaparte. A rather nightmarish twelve boulevards converge here and it’s said that if you’re involved in an accident driving round the circle, insurance companies split the cost fifty-fifty as each driver is considered at fault. Allegedly it’s the only place in the city where an accident is not judged.

The roads are generally very good in France. Auto routes and toll roads provide swift passages across the country. In fact The French are so fond of their auto routes they give them nicknames! The A6 which runs from Paris to Lyon is called the L’Autoroute du Soleil, the Sun Motorway, because you’re heading for the sunny bit of France! And the A26 – which runs from Calais in the north to Troyes in Champagne is called the Autoroute des Anglais, or the “Motorway of the English” – because millions of people every year travel from the UK by ferry and train in their cars and head south from Calais.

Road travel then is easy in France, and it’s not just the motorways, the country lanes are rarely busy. And sometimes you really need a car to get to see places where there is no public transport.

Which brings us rather neatly to rail travel… my preferred mode of getting around.

Rail travel in France

The state-owned rail network SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer) makes travel across parts of France very easy, and travel via the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) trains, which travel at speeds of up to 320km/h connect Paris to every region. Trains whisk you across France: Paris to Bordeaux in just two hours, Paris to Marseille in less than 3.5 hours.

The fast train services to stations in the main cities in all the departments of France then connect to local services which are generally slower trains, known as TER (Transport Express Regional). .

When it comes to buying tickets – there are a few things to know:

The earlier you buy your ticket for TGV trains or intercity trains, the cheaper it will be. And the price difference is huge, you can pay 6 times more on the day than you would have paid if you booked a few months in advance. But often tickets are not on sale more than 4 months before the travel date!

You can buy train tickets through SNCF online, their app, through other companies, or in person at ticket offices. A lot of bigger stations in cities have SNCF sales offices on site – but be prepared for queues.

If you have a printed ticket – you will need to compost it before you board the train. The first time I got a train and the ticket collector came round to check tickets and asked me why I hadn’t composted my ticket I was flabbergasted, I hadn’t even used it, let alone put it in the compost bin. But this is not about recycling – it’s about time stamping your ticket. There are little yellow machines at the entry to the platform area and you push your ticket into a slot and it stamps it! Weird yes. But true.

Always leave plenty of time to get on your train, often they are formed of multiple carriages. You’ll be assigned a seat in advance and your carriage could be a long walk down the platform. Sometimes trains split into two and go different ways – so always get in the right carriage!

You can also track your train times through the SNCF App – no I’m not working for them, but it can make it easier for you to travel, the app will show your platform number and if there are any delays.

On the whole I love travelling by train. It can sometimes seem like strikes are almost non-stop when you read the news, but in 12 years of pretty much monthly train travel in France and I don’t know how many hundreds journeys, I’ve only had strike issues twice. The people that work on the trains really do take pride in their jobs, they wear a smart uniform, they’re generally really helpful and the trains are clean and comfortable. And I love the jingle that plays at all French train stations when they’re announcing a train departure or arrival – it’s iconic and mostly I get that frisson of excitement when I hear it – unless they’re announcing a delay or cancellation then it’s the ring tone of doom!

Bus travel in France

There are bus services which often run from outside major train stations. They’re called Gare Routières. Often there are boards up in the stations giving details of bus departures and arrivals. These are not like the buses in Paris which you can hop on and off of with your travel pass (which you can buy at stations, tabacs etc). but buses that you book like trains. Not quite in the American Greyhound Bus travel league but similarly, these offer cross country coach services. Four major bus companies are present on most bus routes in France and Europe: Isilines, Eurolines, Flixbus and Ouibus.

While coach services usually can’t compete with aeroplanes and trains in terms of speed (surprisingly sometimes buses are actually quicker when you factor in waiting times so it’s worth checking), they are usually the most affordable way to get around France. On top of this, a lot of buses operate overnight services meaning you can save on hotel fees and precious holiday time.

Bike travel in France

You can also cycle across France. Here, cycling is a national sport, after all this is the country that invented the Tour de France. You’ll often spot a lycra-clad enthusiast, or a whole raft of cyclists hogging the road. There are numerous dedicated cycle routes and voies vertes (green ways) which are traffic free. The French part of famous bike route La Scandibérique (which runs from Norway to Spain) is known as the Euro Velo 3. It runs for 1700km through France from the Belgium border in the far north, through Paris and the Loire Valley through to the Pays Basque in the far south.

Plane travel in France

In 2023 France banned short-haul domestic flights. Now any journeys that you can that you can take by train in 2.5 hours are not offered as a flight, for instance, Paris/Bordeaux, Paris/Lyon and Paris/Nantes. But you can take a flight from Paris to Marseille for instance.

Travel in France by boat

There are several ferry services within France. Corsica is France’s most famous destination, but you can also easily travel from France to Mallorca, Menorca, or Sardinia, as well as some of the Channel Islands. From the ports of Sète and especially Marseille, long-distance ferries sail to Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. France is a land of rivers so boat travel plays quite a big part even to this day especially for holiday makers. In the old days when goods were often transported by boat, canals were created – now they’re fabulous for holidays on barges.

Travel on the Paris Metro

The underground train service in Paris was originally called the Compagnie du chemin de fer métropolitain de Paris (“The Paris Metropolitan Railway Company”). It was gradually shortened to Metro. The Metro has it’s own jingle which is played for announcements. It’s quite funky!

There are 304 stations in Paris, 16 lines – and it’s growing. Four more metro lines are currently being dug out. It’s said that in central Paris you are never more than 500 metres from a metro station! And it takes around 60 seconds to go by metro from one station to another.

The deepest metro station is Abessess, at the bottom of Montmartre. I once walked up the stairs there, nearly gave me a heart attack. It’s 118 feet underground, and there are 285 steps which wind around a spiral staircase. You can take the lift though! At the entrance to the station is a stunning glass cover – created by architect Hector Guimard. He designed many of the iconic entrances between 1900 and 1913.

It’s said that the Paris metro covers 600,000 miles a day – the equivalent of ten times around the world!

Many stations are named after the street above, the neighbourhood, or famous people, Presidents, like Charles de Gaulle and Franklin D Roosevelt, saints and writers. But some have some unusual names. Like Metro Blanche. The name refers to the white dust that covered houses from carts carrying plaster from the quarries near Montmartre!

There is also a metro station called Bonne-Nouvelle, which means good news, named after a local church, and it always makes me laugh to think that the onboard announcement when you’re arriving there is “The next station is good news!”

And some stations are really fascinating. Arts et Metiers for instance on line 11 is kitted out like Captain Nimo’s copper submarine! And at the Louvre metro, there are replica treasure from the museum. And many stations have artistic tiled walls and frescoes

Travel the French way!

If you want to travel the French way here are some of my three top tips:

As you travel, visit the local markets, many have tables and chairs set up where you can try local products – or have a picnic.

Don’t check your work email while on holiday, switch off, relax and recharge your inner batteries.

Pack a light raincoat, even if you’re going to the south of France in the summer, it’s not unknown for it to rain!

Janine Marsh is the author of several internationally best-selling books about France. Her latest book How to be French – a celebration of the French lifestyle and art de vivre, is out now – a look at the French way of life. Find all books on her website janinemarsh.com