La Belle France

France has a way of making itself legible through contrast, and nine days moving from Paris to the walled port city of St. Malo and then inland to the Loire Valley gives students exactly that kind of layered reading. The tour opens where most French stories begin — Paris — with four days to take the measure of a capital that has shaped Western art, politics, and daily life for centuries. From there, the group boards a motorcoach and heads west to St. Malo, a fortified corsair city jutting into the English Channel, where the Atlantic light and the granite ramparts make a convincing argument that France is more than its capital. The Loire Valley closes the loop, offering a landscape of châteaux, vineyards, and river light that feels like the Renaissance decided to stay.