by Vas Mylko, Roman Bilusiak
Intro
We have been testing new Curiosio on France, or has it been France on new Curiosio? Our AI engine Ingeenee is installed in France. Curious trips in France are officially unlocked.
To validate that we have all points and places, creating interesting trips for a different time and financial requirements, providing a variety of trip plans — we took inspiration from the four cool travel stories from Condé Nast Traveler and National Geographic— and made them interactive.
Surfing in the West of France
The first inspiration originated from the surf tour from Brittany to Biarritz by Condé Nast Traveler. It’s a route along the western coast of France with emphasis on the cool surfing points: Lège-Cap-Ferret, La Teste-de-Buch/Dune of Pilat, Seignosse, Soorts-Hossegor, Biarritz. Surfers shall love this journey.
You could click and open the extended information about all those points and places in the interactive trip plan below. Some clicks/taps will navigate to English Wikipedia, some will open Atlas Obscura. You can send the route to Google Maps.
We added Saint-Émilion to the original story because it is a great viticulture point. Saint-Émilion is registered as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. So we created an interactive trip plan for surfers wine lovers.
Less/Lesser/Little Brittany
The second inspiration came from the comprehensive road trip in Brittany by Condé Nast Traveler. You could feel the Celtic vibe on this journey.
Brittany — a very interesting region of France. “Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain (as opposed to Great Britain, with which it shares an etymology). Brittany is a cultural region in the west of France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica during the period of Roman occupation. It became an independent kingdom and then a duchy before being united with the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province governed as a separate nation under the crown. Brittany is the site of some of the world’s oldest standing architecture, home to the saints, which date to the early 5th millennium BC.” Wikipedia.
We made Bordeaux as a starting and finishing point. If you want, you could click [Modify] and change the starting and finishing points to Nantes. Just edit the list of points — remove Bordeaux on the left and right, insert Nantes on the left and right.
If you want different points as starting and finishing then edit the leftmost and the rightmost ones exactly the same way, just use the other names.
Secret Corner of France
The third inspiration originated from Franche-Comte: is this the most overlooked corner of France? by Condé Nast Traveler. This part of France is a land of clockmakers and painters, even the French can’t teach you about it.
This is a cyclic route, starting and finishing in Besançon. “Besançon has been labeled a “Town of Art and History” since 1986 and its fortifications due to Vauban has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2008.” Wikipedia.
We added Lake Geneva to the route to emphasize proximity to Switzerland, to make you better feel this corner’ness of that part of France.
Roadtripping Provence
The fourth inspiration came from the Road Tripping Provence by National Geographic. Three previous trips were created for two, while this one is for four. National Geographic says that for many years cruising around the south of France did not sound like a family-friendly vacation because most accommodations in the region were geared toward couples. No more.
This journey goes through Camargue, Les Baux-de-Provence and Saint-Remy, Aix-en-Provence, Verdon Gorge. We made is starting and finishing in Montpellier. You can change the starting and the finishing points to any others, by editing the list of points.
Rallye Monte-Carlo Drive
This is the inspiration for you. You could experiment for yourself. Take a travel story you like and make an own trip plan from it, with a route and itinerary. For example, you would love to drive/ride through the Monte Carlo Rally segments.
You can take an interactive map of Monte-Carlo Rally 2018 and write down the points, doing manual GeoNER (Geo Named Entity Recognition). Here are several points of only one special stage close to Monaco: La Bollène-Vésubie (Col de Turini there too), Lucéram. There is another one special stage, even closer to Monaco. There are multiple stages a bit deeper inland in France. You could extract the other points from the other segments of interest. Then throw all those points into Curiosio, and see which trip plans are possible in your requirements.
PS.
Photo collages were created with PhotoCollage. Kudos to Adrien Vergé.
