Itinerary · for one

France · the vendanges line

A vendanges-season rail line down France · the SNCF spine from Paris to Marseille · solo · twelve nights. Three nights in Paris to start — Rue Cler in the morning, steak frites at a corner zinc, the pastry crawl from Du Pain et des Idées to Cédric Grolet, dinner at L”Ami Jean and a nightcap at Little Red Door. One night at Reims for the chalk crayères of Taittinger and Pommery, lunch at Le Foch, biscuits roses dipped in champagne. Two nights at Beaune for the Marché aux Vins flight under the Cordeliers, the climats walk from Pommard through Meursault, the pilgrimage to the Romanée-Conti fence. Three nights in Lyon for a bouchon dinner of quenelles de brochet and tablier de sapeur, Les Halles de Paul Bocuse, Saturday morning at the Saint-Antoine market. One night at Avignon for Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the galets roulés, the truffle counter at Carpentras just opening for the late-autumn season. Two nights at Marseille for bouillabaisse at Chez Fonfon, oursins off the fish quay, a Calanques boat for a swim before lunch.

1 traveler 6 bases 12 nights 13 min read

v1 · May 12, 2026

Sep 20 · Day 1 · the first one

CDG on a Monday. Then twelve nights of vendanges.

Hong Kong to Paris on a Sunday night, Gare de l''Est by Tuesday for the first TGV south. Autumn into the harvest — Champagne pickers on the Côte des Blancs, the Hospices auction lights going up in Beaune, the last Côte d''Or pinot off the vines, garnache in the southern Rhône, oursins on the Marseille quays. Twelve nights down the SNCF spine — Paris for the bistrots and the Marché Bastille, Reims for the chalk crayères under Taittinger and Krug, Beaune to walk the climats from Pommard through Meursault to the fence at Romanée-Conti, Lyon for bouchons and quenelles at Daniel et Denise, Avignon for Châteauneuf-du-Pape and the galets roulés, Marseille for bouillabaisse at Chez Fonfon and a swim in the Calanques before lunch.

Begin the journey ↓

Sep 20 → Oct 2 · 12 nights · 6 bases · 810 km between bases

Chapter 01 · Sep 20–22 Days 1–3

Paris · bistrots and boulangeries

Three mornings of boulangerie steam and three evenings of bistrot zinc. Steak frites with a carafe of Côtes du Rhône, a pastry crawl through the 10th, the Marché Bastille in full vendanges colour.

3 nights

Land CDG · RER B to Gare du Nord · 35 min

Base three nights in the 7th or the Marais · walking distance to a market and a corner bistrot

Things to do

Rue Cler in the morning · the rotisserie chicken stand, the fromagerie, a croissant from Mamiche around the corner
Dinner at L'Ami Jean · Stéphane Jego's Basque bistronomie · the rice pudding for the table
Pastry crawl · Du Pain et des Idées for the bavarois, Cédric Grolet for the trompe-l'oeil fruits, a Poilâne loaf for the room
Wine flight at Septime La Cave · natural pours by the glass, anchoïade and a saucisson plate
Marché Bastille on Thursday morning · vendanges-season grapes, figs, a tin of Berthillon glace from Île Saint-Louis on the walk back

Most good bistrots take reservations one month out · L'Ami Jean, Le Servan, Clamato — book the day the window opens · Little Red Door does not take walk-ins after 9pm on weekends

Bookings

flight HKG → CDG · overnight · landing Mon morning pending

hotel Paris · 3 nights in the 7th or Marais pending

Walk-to-market priority over view

train TGV Paris (Est) → Reims · 45 min pending

Wed midday departure, second-class window seat right side for the vineyards

Chapter 01 · the story

Not the Paris of the cliché — not the Seine sunset on the Île de la Cité, not the Eiffel from the Trocadéro. The Paris of 7am at the Marché d'Aligre, where the fishmonger is shouting at the price of the daurade and nobody is performing romance for anyone.

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The Café de Flore wants twelve euros for a café au lait and it gets it, because the chair faces Boulevard Saint-Germain and the photograph is included. That is one Paris. The other one is up at the rue Mouffetard at half past six, when the fishmonger is rinsing the slab with a hose and the boulangerie on the corner is putting out the first baguettes of the morning, still cracking from the oven, and a man in a navy apron is loading crates of figs onto a trolley because vendanges season has reached the markets.

The walk east goes through the 5th into the 12th and ends at the Marché d’Aligre by seven, when the covered hall opens and the outdoor stalls have already been trading for an hour. The grapes are Muscat de Hambourg in purple paper cones. The cheese stand is selling Comté at three ages. The flea section on Place d’Aligre puts out tarnished silverware on a blanket and a copy of Le Monde from 1974.

Père-Lachaise opens at eight. The cobbles are wet from the overnight sweepers and the chestnuts are starting to drop. Oscar Wilde’s tomb is behind a glass screen now because the lipstick kisses were eating the limestone, but Jim Morrison still has flowers, and Chopin’s grave is the quiet one nobody photographs.

In the afternoon the National Library reading room on rue de Richelieu is open to the public for an hour around four — the oval room with the cast-iron columns and the green reading lamps, the one Walter Benjamin sat in. It is the inverse of the Eiffel Tower: it costs nothing, the queue is two people, and what is on display is a city thinking rather than a city posing. That Paris is the one worth the three nights.

Chapter 02 · Sep 23 Day 4

Reims · the chalk crayères

One night in the chalk. Roman crayères 30 metres down at Taittinger, the 18m galleries at Pommery, Krug on the Place. Vendanges in the Côte des Blancs, biscuits roses dipped in a coupe.

1 night

Train TGV Paris (Est) → Reims · 45 min · arrive midday for the first cave booking

Cellars all four flagships require pre-booking · no walk-ins

Things to do

Taittinger · the 4th-century Gallo-Roman crayères 30m under the city · a flight of Comtes de Champagne at the end
Pommery · the 18m-deep galleries cut by the widow Louise Pommery · a glass of Cuvée Louise in the cellar
Krug · the flagship visit by appointment · a flight of Grande Cuvée alongside a single-vineyard Clos du Mesnil
Lunch at Le Foch · the local one-star · a half bottle of grower champagne and the langoustine ravioli
Biscuits roses de Reims at Fossier · the pink biscuit dipped in a glass of brut, the way the grandmothers do it

Cellar bookings open 60 days ahead · Krug only accepts a small number of visits a week · sommelier-led flights cost more than the public tour and are worth it · the cathedral evening light show runs through September

Bookings

train TGV Paris (Est) → Reims · 45 min pending

hotel Reims · 1 night near Place Drouet-d'Erlon pending

Walking distance to Taittinger and Pommery; cathedral side for the evening light show

activity Champagne cave triple · Taittinger + Pommery + Krug pending

Pre-book each house separately; allow 90 min between visits

Chapter 02 · the story

Reims is a city that lives on two floors. The cathedral where twenty-five French kings were crowned is the upper one. The chalk crayères thirty metres down, dug by Gallo-Romans in the 4th century and now holding several million bottles of Champagne, are the other.

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The TGV from Paris-Est takes forty-five minutes and arrives just after eleven. The vineyards out the right window start before Château-Thierry — south-facing slopes, the chalk lifting through the topsoil in pale strips — and by the time the train slows for Reims the Montagne de Reims is on the horizon, all of it under vine, the Pinot Noir parcels turning copper for vendanges.

At Taittinger the entrance is unassuming, a doorway on rue de Tambour, and then a stone staircase drops you thirty metres into the chalk. The crayères were quarried in the 4th century by the Gallo-Romans for building stone — the pyramidal shaft above your head goes straight up to a square of daylight — and the temperature on the floor stays at ten degrees year-round, which is exactly why the houses dug their bottles in down here. The walls are soft chalk you can score with a fingernail. The bottles sit on lath in ranks of several million. At the end there is a flight of Comtes de Champagne 2012 in a tasting room cut into the wall, and the cellar master pours from his own bottle.

Pommery’s galleries are eighteen metres down and are signed with the names of cities — Manchester, Buenos Aires — that the widow Pommery shipped to in the 1860s. The art installations rotate. Krug is by appointment only, a small group, and the flight closes with a Clos du Mesnil from a single walled vineyard the size of a city block.

Up at street level the cathedral lights up after dark with a projection mapping that traces the original mediaeval polychrome back onto the limestone — the gargoyles in gold, the rose window in blues — and the biscuits roses at Maison Fossier are still dipped in a coupe of brut the way the grandmothers do it. Both floors at once.

Chapter 03 · Sep 24–25 Days 5–6

Beaune · the climats of the Côte d'Or

Two nights in the medieval capital of Burgundy. The polychrome roof of the Hôtel-Dieu, a tasting flight under the Cordeliers, a slow drive south through the climats with a glass of 2019 Pommard at the cellar door.

2 nights

Train Reims → Paris → Dijon · TGV ~3h with a Gare de Lyon change · then 25 min regional to Beaune

Rental small car collected in Beaune for the Côte d'Or climats day

Things to do

Hospices de Beaune (Hôtel-Dieu) · the glazed-tile polychrome roof and the November wine auction galleries
Marché aux Vins · a self-guided tasting flight in the cellars under the Église des Cordeliers · 15 wines from Bourgogne to Grand Cru
Cellar visits · Bouchard Père et Fils, Joseph Drouhin, Maison Louis Jadot · book one morning and one afternoon, leave time for lunch
Climats drive south · Pommard, Volnay, Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet, Chassagne · jambon persillé and an Époisses at a roadside cave
The Romanée-Conti fence at Vosne-Romanée · the pilgrimage stop · the cross at the head of the parcel, the most expensive dirt in France

Hospices auction is the third Sunday of November · in late September the town is in the run-up, the vines still being picked, no auction crowds yet · Romanée-Conti houses do not accept casual visits, the fence is the closest you get

Bookings

train Reims → Beaune via Paris and Dijon · TGV + TER pending

hotel Beaune · 2 nights inside the ramparts pending

Walking distance to the Hôtel-Dieu and the Marché aux Vins

rental Small car · 2 days · Beaune pickup and return pending

Côte d'Or climats route; no tolls; manual transmission default

Chapter 03 · the story

The Hôtel-Dieu was a hospital for the poor, founded in 1443 by a chancellor who wanted to buy his way into heaven. He bought himself a polychrome tile roof that has outlasted every king he served, and a wine auction the third Sunday of November that still pays the bills six centuries later.

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The Hôtel-Dieu sits behind a plain stone wall on rue de l’Hôtel-Dieu and you have to step into the cobbled courtyard before the roof shows itself — green, yellow, black, terracotta in geometric patterns, the glazed tiles fired in Burgundy and laid in 1452 and mostly still original. Nicolas Rolin founded it as a charity hospital because the Hundred Years’ War had left Beaune full of the destitute, and the institution survived because he endowed it with vineyards. Those vineyards still belong to the Hospices. The wine they make is auctioned once a year, the third Sunday of November, by Christie’s, in barrels named after the donors who gave the parcels in the 15th century.

By the second weekend of September the auction is still two months out but the town is already in its rhythm. The Saturday market spreads across Place de la Halle — gougères still warm from the oven at the Boulangerie Bourgogne, jambon persillé in glass jars, a chèvre that the producer hand-cuts off the wheel. The vines on the slopes outside the ramparts are being picked. You can hear the tractors from inside the walls.

The climats drive south is twenty kilometres and four hours if you take it slowly. Pommard, then Volnay on the slope above. Meursault is white-wine country and the cellars open the door if you ring. Puligny-Montrachet and Chassagne-Montrachet share one of the most valuable hectares on earth — the Grand Cru parcels are marked with small stone walls and a name on a plaque, Le Montrachet, five letters that price a bottle at four figures.

At Vosne-Romanée the Romanée-Conti parcel is fenced and signed and about the size of a school playground. There is a stone cross at the top. People stand at the fence and look at the dirt. The most expensive vineyard in France is half a hectare of sloping clay, and what you see from the road is a perfectly ordinary row of pinot noir vines.

Chapter 04 · Sep 26–28 Days 7–9

Lyon · the bouchon capital

Three nights in the gastronomy capital. Quenelles de brochet at a Vieux Lyon bouchon, pike pâté at Les Halles, the Saint-Antoine market on a Saturday morning, a tarte aux pralines roses for the walk home.

3 nights

Train Beaune → Lyon Part-Dieu · TER ~1h45 direct · vineyards out the right window

Base three nights in Presqu'île or Vieux Lyon · walking distance to a bouchon and the Saône

Things to do

Bouchon dinner at Daniel et Denise · quenelles de brochet sauce Nantua, tablier de sapeur, île flottante · paper-tablecloth-and-pot-lyonnais
Les Halles de Lyon-Paul Bocuse · pike pâté at Pignol, saucisson at Sibilia, a wedge of Saint-Marcellin from Mère Richard
Saint-Antoine farmers' market on the Saône · Saturday morning · vendanges grapes, walnuts, raw-milk cheese, a paper cone of pralines roses
Institut Paul Bocuse half-day cooking class · one classic — quenelle, sauce, dressage — done four times until the hands learn it
Aperitif on Place des Terreaux at dusk · a glass of Saint-Joseph from a corner cave, a small plate of rosette to absorb the last day

Lyon bouchons close Sundays and most Mondays · andouillette is offal and unmistakable, ask before you order if you're not sure · Le Garet and Café des Fédérations are the other two reference rooms if Daniel et Denise is full

Bookings

train Beaune → Lyon Part-Dieu · TER · 1h45 direct pending

hotel Lyon · 3 nights in Presqu'île or Vieux Lyon pending

Top floor for the Fourvière view if available

activity Institut Paul Bocuse · half-day cooking class pending

Book 4-6 weeks ahead; English session runs once a week

Chapter 04 · the story

Lyon argues, with some justification, that it is the gastronomic capital of France. The argument rests on the bouchon — a room of twelve tables, paper tablecloths, a pot of marc on the bar, and a menu that has not changed since the silk workers of Croix-Rousse first walked down the hill to eat in it.

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Daniel et Denise on rue de Créqui has thirty-two seats and a choreography that does not vary. The patron writes the day’s menu on a slate at six. The first course arrives in a heavy white ramekin — quenelle de brochet, the pike-and-cream dumpling poached and then baked under sauce Nantua, a crayfish bisque so red it looks painted on. The second is the tablier de sapeur, beef tripe breaded and grilled, named after the leather apron of a 19th-century fireman because the colour matches. The third is île flottante, a poached meringue raft on crème anglaise. A carafe of Côtes du Rhône arrives without being ordered. The bill is sixty euros.

In the morning Les Halles de Lyon — the indoor market named for Paul Bocuse and rebuilt in 2006 — opens at seven. Pignol does the pike pâté. Sibilia has cured saucisson dangling like stalactites. Mère Richard cuts Saint-Marcellin off the wheel and presses it through your fingers to test the ripeness — the cheese should collapse, not crumble. The whole brigade of Bocuse trainees comes through here in white jackets before the lunch service.

Vieux Lyon at dusk is renaissance Lyon — pink and ochre courtyards, the traboules that thread between the buildings, the covered passageways that the silk workers used to get bolts of cloth from Croix-Rousse down to the river without rain. You can still walk them. The doors on rue du Boeuf push inward and the courtyard behind is sometimes a private garden and sometimes a fountain and once a spiral staircase three storeys tall in pale stone.

Up the funicular on Fourvière at sunset, the two rivers — the Saône silver, the Rhône green — fold into each other at the south end of the Presqu’île, and the whole grid of the city is a single plate of terracotta tile with the bouchon smoke rising out of it.

Chapter 05 · Sep 29 Day 10

Avignon · the southern Rhône

One night under the Provençal sun. Galets roulés in the Châteauneuf vineyards, a glass of Domaine du Pegau at the cellar door, Gigondas and Vacqueyras on the way back, dinner in the hidden kitchen at La Mirande.

1 night

Train Lyon Part-Dieu → Avignon TGV · 1h10 direct

Rental small car for the Châteauneuf and Gigondas vineyard loop

Things to do

Châteauneuf-du-Pape cellar day · Domaine du Pegau, Château La Nerthe · the galets roulés in the rows, a vertical of grenache-syrah-mourvèdre
Gigondas and Vacqueyras on the loop back · a stop at Domaine Santa Duc, the Dentelles de Montmirail rising behind the cellar
Marché des Halles d'Avignon · vendanges-season figs and grapes, Banon goat cheese in chestnut leaves, a jar of tapenade for home
La Mirande hidden kitchen · dinner at the 18th-century chef's table behind the Palais des Papes, six courses with paired southern Rhône glasses
Carpentras truffle market on Friday · the late-autumn season just opening · a small black truffle from a producer, smelled across the table

Vendanges runs late September through mid-October in the southern Rhône · cellars are working, tastings need to be booked, weekends are tight · Domaine de la Romanée-Conti has no equivalent here — every grower opens the door if you call ahead

Bookings

train Lyon Part-Dieu → Avignon TGV · 1h10 pending

hotel Avignon · 1 night inside the ramparts pending

La Mirande or a small inn near the Palais des Papes

rental Small car · 1 day · Avignon TGV pickup pending

Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Gigondas vineyard loop

Chapter 05 · the story

From 1309 to 1377 there were seven popes in Avignon and none in Rome. They built a palace the size of four cathedrals on the rock above the Rhône, ran Christendom from it for sixty years, then went home and left the building to the Provençal sun and a song about a bridge that does not finish.

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The Palais des Papes is the largest Gothic palace in Europe and it shows. The walls are five metres thick, the great audience hall is fifty metres long, and the frescoes in the Chambre du Cerf — hunting scenes painted around 1343, the deer leaping out of the green — are intact because the popes kept the windows shuttered. Up on the roof the wind comes off the Rhône and the Mont Ventoux is on the horizon, the bald white summit a hundred kilometres north-east, the Tour de France climb that breaks people every July.

The Pont d’Avignon is half a bridge. Four arches of the original twenty-two survived the floods of the 17th century and the authorities stopped rebuilding. The song — sur le pont d’Avignon, l’on y danse — is wrong about the dancing; people danced sous, under the arches on the island in the middle of the river, where the markets were. The error is older than anyone in the chorus.

The vineyard loop starts twenty minutes north at Châteauneuf-du-Pape, where the soil is a single layer of galets roulés — fist-sized rounded stones from a Rhône glacier, polished smooth, packed across the whole appellation. They hold the day’s heat and release it back into the vines at night, which is why the grenache here ripens to fifteen degrees of alcohol without losing tension. At Domaine du Pegau the cellar door pours a vertical: 2018, 2019, 2020. The rosé is the colour of onion skin in the carafe.

In July the Festival d’Avignon takes over every courtyard in the walled town and the Place du Palais turns into an open-air stage. In September the festival posters are still up, faded, peeling slightly. The town belongs to itself again.

Chapter 06 · Sep 30 – Oct 1 Days 11–12

Marseille · bouillabaisse and the Calanques

Two nights at the end of the line. Bouillabaisse at Chez Fonfon — five rockfish, rouille on toast, a slick of saffron broth — pastis on the Vieux Port, panisses in Noailles, a swim in a Calanque before lunch.

2 nights

Train Avignon TGV → Marseille Saint-Charles · 35 min

Out Marseille (MRS) → CDG → HKG · Saturday afternoon · long-haul home

Things to do

Bouillabaisse at Chez Fonfon · the Vallon des Auffes set menu · five rockfish, rouille on grilled bread rubbed with garlic, a saffron broth poured tableside
Calanques boat from the Vieux Port · a morning swim at Sormiou or En-Vau · cold Mediterranean, white limestone, a sandwich on the deck back
Noailles street food · panisses fried in chickpea flour, Comorian samosas, North African pastries, a glass of mint tea on a plastic stool
Oursins on the Quai des Belges · the morning fish market, sea urchins cracked open with a knife, a glass of cold white from a corner caviste
Navettes from Le Four des Navettes · the orange-flower biscuits baked at the same address since 1781 · a tin for the carry-on home

Bouillabaisse needs 24h notice at the reference rooms — Chez Fonfon, Le Petit Nice, Chez Michel · oursins season opens September 1 · Calanques boats stop running in rough weather, check the morning before · Saint-Charles is a five-minute taxi to the bouillabaisse rooms but a long walk

Bookings

train Avignon TGV → Marseille Saint-Charles · 35 min pending

hotel Marseille · 2 nights near the Vieux Port pending

Le Panier or Vieux Port side; sea view if available

activity Chez Fonfon · bouillabaisse set menu · 24h pre-order pending

Call from Avignon the day before; ask for a window table on the Vallon des Auffes

flight MRS → CDG → HKG · Saturday afternoon home pending

Chapter 06 · the story

Marseille is the city the rest of France ignores and the city that does not particularly mind. Founded by Greek sailors from Phocaea around 600 BC, it has been a port for twenty-six centuries and has no interest in being Paris.

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At seven in the morning the Vieux-Port is still grey-blue and the fishing boats are already in. They tie up along the Quai des Belges and the morning market spreads along the rail — daurade, rouget, loup de mer, sea urchins prised open with a knife in front of you for two euros a piece. The seller wears yellow rubber boots and shouts the prices in Provençal-accented French that flattens every vowel. Behind, the brasseries on the quay open their terraces and the first pastis of the day is being poured into glasses with ice cubes that crack as the water hits.

Notre-Dame de la Garde is at the top of the city on a limestone hill the locals call la bonne mère. The basilica is neo-Byzantine, gold mosaic inside, a gilded Madonna on top, and the view from the parvis takes in every red-tile roof in the city and the Frioul islands a kilometre offshore. Sailors hang ex-votos inside — model ships, painted plaques thanking the Virgin for saving them from a storm in 1923, in 1957, in 2011.

Chez Fonfon does the bouillabaisse at the Vallon des Auffes, a tiny fishing cove ten minutes by taxi from the centre. The set menu needs twenty-four hours notice and arrives in two services: first the saffron broth poured tableside over a slice of grilled bread rubbed with garlic and rouille, then five rockfish — rascasse, grondin, congre, saint-pierre, vive — filleted at the table and served with the soup the second time around. It costs ninety euros and is worth every centime.

Up at the Cité Radieuse — Le Corbusier’s 1952 social-housing experiment on Boulevard Michelet, the building that named the brutalist movement — the rooftop is open to the public. The running track on top is concrete. The kindergarten still operates. You can have a coffee at the hotel bar inside and feel the mid-century utopia of it.

Oct 2 · Day 13 · the last one

Last pastis on the Vieux Port. Then the flight home.

Final aperitif on a Marseille terrace, the sun going gold over the forts, a glass of Ricard cut five-to-one with cold water and a small plate of panisses still warm from the fryer. Marignane in the morning, CDG by midday, Hong Kong by Sunday. Twelve nights — Champagne in the glass, jambon persillé in the fridge, a tin of navettes from Le Four des Navettes in the carry-on, the smell of saffron and rouille and the rumble of the TGV south already half-remembered.

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