Going to France for the Rugby World Cup next month? Susan Owenshas some advice for making the most of the host cities.
They say the game is played in heaven, but for earthly mortals in southwestern France it's pursued with religious passion in an area known as L'Ovalie - "the land of the oval ball" - of which Toulouse is the capital. It's one of the cities hosting the Rugby World Cup, which kicks off on September 7th, when Argentina play the hosts in Paris. Another eight, mainly southern cities (plus Edinburgh and Cardiff) will host 48 matches before the final is played, on October 20th.
The competition is one of the world's largest sporting events; only the Fifa World Cup and the summer Olympics have bigger followings. Some 600 players from 20 teams will take part, watched by almost two and a half million spectators.
The winner of the tournament takes the Webb Ellis Cup, named after William Webb Ellis, who is credited, as a pupil at Rugby School, in England, with inventing the game in 1823. The sport spread from the English-speaking world to countries such as Japan, Argentina and Romania - all of which are competing this year - and 90 countries took part in the 2004 qualifying tournament. Still, the game's origins and image are still very English, inextricably linked to a world of private schools, university clubs and elite business.
England, who beat the Wallabies in 2003, when Sydney hosted the competition, currently hold the title. That game was broadcast to 205 countries, and when the victorious England team returned to London a crowd of 750,000 welcomed them home - the largest sporting celebration of its kind in Britain.
This year's Rugby World Cup (www.rugby worldcup.com) has its own train, which has been taking the Webb Ellis Cup to 100 French towns. Greeted by city fathers at each stop, it is beefing up interest among schoolchildren and helping to recruit 5,000 volunteers who will help tourists.
Of course, no such pump-priming will be required for fans travelling to France for the event - Ireland are playing their pool-stage matches in Paris and Bordeaux - but even diehards will be looking to do more than just watch the battle for the pig's bladder. Here is our guide to making the most of the French towns and cities hosting Rugby World Cup matches.
MARSEILLES
The sea defines Marseilles's gastronomy and edgy charm, although the Mistral, a wind that can seem as strong as the exhaust from a jet engine, sometimes blows a hole in the city's ebullience.
When that happens, try sheltering at the perfectly positioned Petit Nice Passedat hotel (www.petitnice-passedat.com), home of a two-Michelin-star restaurant. Its Hellenic-style villas are set on a rocky promontory; every room has a view of the sparkling Mediterranean. Swim in the pool or climb down to the shore.
The Passedat family has owned the hotel since 1917, and Gerald, the current owner, promises to make Marseilles smooth sailing for you. Ask him to organise a small boat for a trip around the calanques, the rocky coves that dot this coastline, which the locals like to keep secret, and he'll organise a picnic for you, too.
Marseilles' Vieux Port (old port), which is central to life in the city, is crammed with small fishing boats and huge luxury yachts. Just add 57km of beaches and your own blue-and-white striped fisherman's jersey.
Running northeast from the old port is La Canebière, the city's main thoroughfare and one of the world's oldest avenues. For the best bouillabaisse - in our opinion, at least - try Michel-Brasserie des Catalans (Rue des Catalans), overlooking the old harbour.
Drive the winding coastline along Corniche du Président John F Kennedy, where Alfred Hitchcock filmed To Catch a Thief, and return to the old port for a glass of rosé from nearby Aix-en-Provence or sip pastis and watch a game of pétanque.
If you'd like to stop for a pastry, one of Marseilles's best patisseries is (La Canebière), which has been in business since 1820, serving towering, quivering gateaus.
Design aficionados will want to see Le Corbusier's Utopia of modernist housing, La Cité Radieuse, which was loathed at first but is now worshipped.
Oh, and there's a lot of soap in Marseilles. Don't leave without a few bars. Find the best at La Compagnie de Provence (Rue Caisserie, www.lcdp marseille.com). Like any soap calling itself Marseille, it's made from at least 72 per cent olive oil, plus seaweed alkalis.
BORDEAUX
The city is the heart of the world's second-largest wine region, responsible for producing 700 million bottles a year. If you're looking for somewhere stylish to stay, Hauterive Saint-James (above, www.saintjames- bouliac.com ) is arguably France's finest contemporary hotel. Six kilometres outside the city, in Bouliac, the hotel is set in seven hectares of parkland featuring pencil pines and views over vineyards.
Jean Nouvel, who designed Paris's Musée du Quai Branly, created four vast, sun-filled pavilions - based on tobacco-drying sheds that once occupied the site - connected by an open gallery to an elegant sittingroom with towering ceilings, plush armchairs and an imposing fireplace. Have a cocktail party on the breathtaking terrace - or, as you're close to the Atlantic coast, with the Garonne, Gironde and Dordogne rivers nearby, grab a map and take some long walks.
This region is home to five first growths: Château Margaux, Château Lafite Rothschild, Château Mouton Rothschild, Château Latour and Château Haut-Brion. A great place to taste the great vintages is L'Intendant (Allée de Tourny), which has 15,000 bottles. Next, take a half-day tasting lesson (in English, taught by wine waiters) at Maison du Vin de Bordeaux (Cours 30 Juillet). Now you're ready to visit the vineyards, so how about taking a chauffered trip with Bordeaux Wine Travel (www.bordeaux-wine-travel.com), which charges €180-€550?
Don't leave the city without a visit to the opera at the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux. This immense neoclassical building - the work of Victor Louis, architect of Paris's exquisite Palais-Royal - is the oldest wooden-framed opera house in Europe not to have burned or required rebuilding. Home to the region's flagship opera and ballet companies, its interior was restored in 1991 in its original colours of blue and gold.
TOULOUSE
Known as the pink city, Toulouse, say locals, is at its loveliest at night, when the beautiful theatre is floodlit to show off the salmon-coloured bricks used to build this 17th-century city. Toulouse has 220 hectares of listed buildings, the most in France. The beautiful Canal du Midi, which was constructed by Louis XIV and is now a Unesco World Heritage Site, forms an artery through the city. There's no better hotel to view it all from than the 18th-century Hotel des Beaux Arts (www.hoteldesbeauxarts.com). It stands on the banks of the Garonne in the city's historic heart, overlooking its most famous bridge, the Pont Neuf. Toulouse is short on four-star hotels; this warm, stylish three-star establishment promises luxury and charm.
Suburban Toulouse is one of the homes of , the aircraft manufacturer, responsible for a quarter of industrial employment here. The factory is open for visits at weekends, when you can see the A380 double-decker. You may prefer to walk off some cassoulet on the city's 200km of walking and cycling paths. Then go with a clear conscience to Maison Pillon (Rue du Languedoc and branches), which routinely wins prizes for the best chocolate in France.
LYONS
Best starve yourself en route to Lyons, because the city remains the gastronomic cradle of France. It is the home of the globe-trotting chef Paul Bocuse, who is credited - or accused, depending on your point of view - of bringing the world nouvelle cuisine. Either way, Bocuse ranks as one of the past century's greatest chefs. In fact Lyons is almost Bocuse's city: L'Auberge du Pont de Collonges, his original three-Michelin-star restaurant, lies just north of the city (and still serves VGE soup, the €80 truffle-infused broth Bocuse created for President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing); and he has opened four more restaurants in the city that, a touch easier on the wallet, reflect the regional food of France: Le Nord, L'Est, Le Sud and L'Ouest (www.bocuse.fr). Nor is Bocuse all that Lyons and its surrounding area have to offer. Almost as legendary is the Hotel Restaurant Troisgros (www.troisgros.fr), 85km from Lyons, in Roanne, where a third generation of Troisgros chefs presides. It's worth the journey: the family has maintained three Michelin stars for 30 years. These days brothers Marie-Pierre and Michel Troisgros preside over an empire that extends to Japan. The hotel's 18 elegant rooms open onto a courtyard garden. Back in Lyons, some of the loveliest rooms in the city are at the Villa Florentine (www.villaflorentine.com), set high above the old town on the Fourvière hillside, with charming views. Each of the 28 rooms is decorated in warm Mediterranean colours, and the hotel's Michelin-starred restaurant has a private diningroom, should you want to host a celebration for 20 friends.
MONTPELLIER
Even if you're based in Paris, a day trip to Montpellier is worth the effort, as it's just three hours on the TGV to sun-kissed Mediterranean life. You're seven kilometres from the sea, the fruits de mer are sublime and the distant hillsides are planted with spreading olive trees.
Montpellier, a third of whose population is under 35, is also a cultural hub. Cultural life revolves around two opera houses - the new Salle Berlioz is the second largest in France - and the year-round programme of opera, symphonies and baroque music is widely acclaimed. The main attraction next month is a production of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte.
The city is no slouch in the gastronomic stakes, either. The undisputed stars are the Pourcel brothers, Jacques and Laurent, whose hotel and cookery school, Le Jardin des Sens (www.jardin-des-sens.com), provides the ultimate Mediterranean dining experience. The hotel has an edgy design, by Bruno Borrione, who worked for Philippe Stark before making his own reputation. Few cookery schools are as flexible or as charming as this one, which holds three-hour courses with leading chefs three times a week.
NANTES
Affluent Parisians are attracted by the city's oceanic climate and the beautiful thalassotherapy spa 40km away, at La Baule. The place is achingly fashionable for petites filles preoccupied with their silhouettes, and all the talk is of le golf and le jogging. The Gulf Stream warms the sea that laps eight kilometres of white sand - which you can see from the Centre de Thalassothérapie Thalgo, part of the Royal-Thalasso Barrière hotel (www.lucienbarriere.com). The spa pumps seawater into three pools (one is an aquatic gym with underwater rowing and step exercises), and therapists in eight treatment rooms use mineral-rich seaweed to soothe away fatigue, toxins and, they say, cellulite.
Nantes itself is a young, go-ahead university town on the Loire where you'll taste some of Brittany's best seafood. With chateaus up and down the river, you might as well check into one - how about Château de Noirieux (www.chateaudenoirieux.com), a 15th-century timber-and-stone manor house at Briollay, 80 minutes from Nantes? The rooms are furnished with Louis XIII and Regency oak furniture, and there's a dining terrace that overlooks the Loire.
LENS
Why Lens? It's a town of only 35,000 inhabitants, many of whose forefathers were known as the "black mugs". They were the coal miners who built the town's prosperity between the time the first mine was opened, in 1720, and the final one shut, in 1990. The miners were largely responsible for the town's beer festivals, but until an annex of the Louvre opens, in 2009, there's not a lot else in Lens. Head instead for the stylish Château de Beaulieu hotel (www.lechateaude beaulieu.fr), 40km past Lille. Its chef, Marc Meurin, who presides over a glass-roofed restaurant with two Michelin stars, gives private classes for groups of between six and 15.
PARIS
French has given us the word flâner, meaning to stroll, and it should be your mantra in Paris, a compact, walkable city with an extraordinary concentration of beautiful buildings.
You could start your day by sipping a coffee at Café Hugo, on the 400-year-old Place des Vosges (right), considered the most beautiful square in Paris. Two tip-top museums are close by: the Musée Carnavalet (Rue de Sévigné, 4th arrondissement, www.carnavalet.paris.fr) is two mansions dedicated to the history of Paris; the Musée Picasso (Rue de Thorigny, 3rd arrondissement, www.musee-picasso.fr) has the world's largest collection of Picassos. The city has two new museums: the Musée du Quai Branly (Quai Branly, 7th arrondissement, www.quaibranly.fr), which features non-western art, and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Rue de Rivoli, 1st arrondissement, www.lesartsdecoratifs.fr), part of the Louvre complex, which has emerged from a €35 million restoration. A key attraction is three beautifully re-created rooms from the home of the great couturier Jeanne Lanvin.
Ticket snobs should ignore the urge for the best seats, turn up at any play, opera or concert 30 minutes before the curtain goes up and buy a €7 ticket. This gives you a seat with restricted views - you may see only half of the stage - but a bird's-eye view at Opéra Bastille or Opéra Garnier is still worth having.
Of course, a city built on luxe calls for a little spending. (Place Vendôme, 1st arrondissement), as Charles Haughey knew, makes beautiful business shirts, with a devastating 300 versions of white. The most beautiful, hand-stitched silk underwear is at Sabbia Rosa (Rue des Saints-Pères, 6th arrondissement). The arcade of the elegant Palais-Royal, built in 1630 for Cardinal Richelieu, has the great perfumery Serge Lutens, where you can have a fragrance blended, and Didier Ludot, which has some of the world's finest vintage clothes. Paris has numerous department stores; many Parisians favour Le Bon Marché (Rue de Sèvres, 7th arrondissement, www.lebonmarche.fr), which has an unrivalled food hall. Perhaps the best cakes come from Pierre Hermé (Rue Bonaparte, 6th arrondissement), whom French Vogue describes as the Picasso of pastry.
Guidebooks will send antique lovers to Les Puces de Paris Saint-Ouen (www.parispuces.com), the huge flea market at Porte de Clignancourt, in the north of the city, but don't be tempted: it's overpriced. Parisians prefer the Porte de Vanves flea market (http://pucesdevanves.typepad.com/), each Saturday and Sunday morning. Dealers sell paintings, jewellery, rugs and decorative works.
There's an Aladdin's cave at (9 Rue Drouot, 9th arrondissement, www.drouot.fr), a legendary auction house with several floors of offerings for sale (Monday to Saturday). Generally, viewing takes place in the mornings, with bidding from 2pm.
A subject at the fore of all French minds is dining. Chez L'Ami Louis (left; Rue du Vertbois, 3rd arrondissement), a favourite of Bill Clinton, is tiny and discreet with a classic (and pricey) French menu. The Argentinian Anahi (Rue Volta, 3rd arrondissement) serves possibly the best steak in Paris. Le Grand Colbert (Rue Vivienne, 2nd arrondissement) is top of the list for a chic brasserie. When a waiter with a winning smile presents your cradle of oysters, just waiting for a kick of lemon, you feel a fully-fledged Parisian. Just around the corner, Juveniles (Rue Richelieu, 1st arrondissement) is an inexpensive wine-and-home-cooking bar run by rugby fan Tim Johnson. Ever since (Rue Royale, 8th arrondissement, www.laduree.fr) supplied the towering pyramids of macaroons for Sofia Coppola's film Marie Antoinette, tea has become a new obsession for Parisians. Café de Flore (Boulevard Saint-Germain, 6th arrondissement) is a great spot for breakfast on a Sunday morning, when it can be low on tourists.
SAINT ÉTIENNE
It was France's biggest industrial region in the 19th century, then struggled for an identity through most of the 20th until, in 1998, the city fathers hit on art and design. Saint Étienne has been staging the International Biennale of Design ever since.
In 2004 a five-year, €5 billion urban-renewal project began the city's transformation - the scheme is well under way, with a vast modernist plaza in the revitalised city centre.
Still, it lacks good hotels. The only three-star is the central Hôtel Terminus du Forez (www.hotel-terminusforez.com), styled with an unlikely neoclassical Egyptian theme.
The best place to eat is Restaurant André Barcet (Cours Victor-Hugo, www.restaurant andrebarcet.com), which serves regional food. You can dine for less at Chantegrill (Avenue de la Libération).
Art fans will love the city's Museum of Modern Art (www.mam-st-etienne.fr), which has the biggest collection of contemporary art outside the Pompidou Centre in Paris.
Univers de Thés (Rue Denis Escoffier), owned by the Chinese-born Carine Horag, is an excellent tea shop with 230 teas and oriental antiques.