France is a phenomenal country with mountains, valleys, rivers, historical sites, breathtaking chateaux, and an intriguing past. Use the attached map of France to note the following.
In 1924 the very first winter Olympics were held in Chamonix, France, a famous ski resort located in the valley below Mont Blanc in the Alps. You will later learn that Mont Blanc translates as White Mountain. Can you guess which word is mountain?
Chambord, a spectacular chateau with more than 440 rooms that resembles a chess board from above, is located on the Loire River. If you chose to visit one room per day, you would not even cover the castle in a year!
Along with its rocky beaches filled with topless swimmers and countless American movie stars, Nice is located on the French Riviera. From Nice one can smell the delightful aroma of flowers in Grasse--flowers used to make hundreds of fine perfumes, cologne, and toilet water. Some 120 Nosers, people with perfect sense of smell, from around the world, determine the label for each fragrance. Which fragrance do you think would cost the most to purchase?
Paris, along with Monumental Paris, became the capital of France when Clovis became its first king and is situated on the Seine River. Did you know Euro-Disney is located just outside Paris, along with Versailles and its gorgeous Hall of Mirrors? Did you know that a French king used Le Louvre, now a famous art museum, for an indoor fox hunt? Mona Lisa resides on one of the walls in the Louvre. If one wants to go really fast from Paris, in the north, to Marseille, in the south of France, one would take the TGV (Le Train de Grand Vitesse) on a smooth ride at some 200 miles per hour.
Asterix, a famous comic strip character from B.C. era, lived in Gaul, France's first name under Roman rule. French is referred to as a Romance language because the Romans conquered the territory they referred to as La Gaule, although those of us who study French believe it is a romantic language. After Clovis and the Franks defeated the Gauls, the territory became France, country of the Franks. Among other contributions the Romans built the ancient aqueduct, Pont du Gard in Nimes, the city that gave us denim jeans (De Nim).
In the United States we, sometimes, refer to our flag as the "red, white, and blue." The French use the same colors but refer to their flag in the order, blue, white, and red, Le Tricolore, since it has three colors.
On the day the revolutionaries stormed the gates of Bastille prison in Paris to free the downtrodden who were wrongly accused, ironically, there were only a handful of prisoners, seven to be exact. All had committed crimes and deserved to be in prison; nonetheless, July 14, 1789 became known as Bastille Day or French Independence Day.
