France is one of the preferred tourist destinations worldwide. The romantic Paris with its myriad of attractions like the Louvre Museum, the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Eiffel Tower, to name some of the most famous, is a hotspot for tourists and receives millions of visitors each year. But if you want to visit France and do something different, why not choose a music or art festival? Here are some interesting options so you can start making plans.

France Festivals is the French federation of international music festivals and its website gathers informations about the festival offer all over France. It is a good resource to find an event near your home swap destination and allows to search by Date, Style or Region, and it even has a map search feature. Here is the URL of France Festivals: http://www.francefestivals.com/uk/

We also have two hand picked festivals for you:

Besançon International Music Festival, one of the oldest classical music festivals, will have its 64th edition in 2011.
When? From September 16th till October 1st, 2011.
Where? Besançon, Franche-Comté, France.
More info about the festival (website content in French): http://www.festival-besancon.com/

Rock en Seine Festival
When? Three days in August, 2011: 26, 27 & 28.
Where? Domaine National de Saint-Cloud, near Paris, France.
Interesting performances: Foo Fighters, Arctic Monkeys, My Chemical Romance, Death in Vegas.
More info about the festival: http://www.rockenseine.com/en/

Image: Photo by Michael Maggs, Wikimedia Commons.

If you’re a city-dweller, and have been so all your life, then you may never have even seen a shooting star. Throughout centuries in songs and literature, shooting stars have been documented and romanticised.

But even if you understand the symbol well, it’s still a special moment seeing one for the first time.  Imagine taking a vacation deep in the heart of the French country-side. Rustic farm-houses, lazy vintage tractors mowing down the windy, dusty roads, a heavy, roving sun beating down. Vine-yards.

Then imagine a chalky, warm evening. Outside in the garden you can tuck in to a light dinner, with some authentic, fruity wine. Then, with the over-whelming sound of the orchestra of crickets, you can look up to the clearest sky you’ve ever seen. So deep in the French country-side, so far away from either pollution or light-pollution, the sky clear, bright and striking.

The stars seem a lot closer, and you can see so many of them shoot across the sky as they give out their final blare of brilliance to the universe. It really is like nothing else. It’s the perfect romantic evening, either spent with a partner, or simply alone enjoying the aesthetic quality of the surroundings.