La Belle France

France rewards slow travel, and nine days across Paris, St. Malo, and the Loire Valley is exactly the kind of itinerary that earns its passport stamps. Rather than racing through highlights, your group spends four days in Paris before heading west to the walled port city of St. Malo, then south into château country along the Loire — a shape that lets students read France in layers, from a capital that contains centuries of political and artistic upheaval to a coastline that once launched corsairs and transatlantic explorers to a river valley lined with Renaissance estates built by kings who had just discovered Italy.