CAPITAL PARIS - POPULATION 60.9 MILLION - AREA 547,030 SQ KM -OFFICIAL LANGUAGE FRENCH
As the world embraces slow travel, France – typically contrary – gets faster. High-speed rail links snaked across the country in 2007 and 2008, opening up new routes from perpetual fave Paris. The Champagne houses of Reims are now only 45 minutes from the capital, the winstubs and fondues of pretty-pink Strasbourg just two hours (down from four). By 2011 Lyon will join the network, sadly too late to be useful for 2009's World Ski Championships in February in nearish Val d'Isčre. One place where slow is guaranteed is Corsica: France's distinctly different Mediterranean isle is a mountain-ruptured land of evil-eye curses, megalithic stones and the continent's best treks.
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