Marching bands serenade showers of carnations and roses at Antibes’ Battle of Flowers.

The Marais is an artsy Paris neighborhood well worth getting to know. My favorite place to have dessert, Le Loir dans la Theiere, is papered in theater posters, seating is a composition of mix matched furniture and a full sideboard of tarts, crumbles, cakes and pies sit out on display.

Those that find museums overwhelming will appreciate the diversity and accessibility of Houston's Menil Collection, an unlikely hodgepodge of Surrealist art and its more primal influences.

The Sunday market has become a fixture in my week where clothes and shoes rub elbows with fruits and vegetables, and interaction between vendor and client are as important as the products themselves. It is noisy and crowded but the products are diverse and the prices good.

Even the French will admit that their language is a difficult one to learn. Upon arriving in Paris, I lacked the ability to communicate and immediately set to building my vocabulary. Discover why taking the initiative to learn French is time well spent.

Even the cheapest tickets to Roland Garros afford an intimate view. The “Allez!” of encouragement abounds like birdsong as Lacoste-suited officials and thin-armed ball boys scuttle to set the stage on the powdery red clay court. Here are a few tips for passing a Spring day at the French open.

France's biannual sales motivate shoppers into a consumer frenzy, not on account of groundbreaking prices, though they do relieve some of the sticker shock I experience in regarding price tags. No stranger to the Parisian boutiques, I usually greet the storm on the first day of the soldes.

A choicely placed last hurrah of the summer, Rock en Seine Festival is a well-organized, eclectic assortment of music loosely grouped into the genre of rock.

If you’re just passing through, not setting up house and home in France, then you won’t have to suffer the costs both monetarily and time-wise of attaining a French drivers license. Never the less, you need to be aware of the difference in road rules.

The Prix de Diane held in Chantilly is the race of the year that offers people watching of the best sort. Everyone out of their shell in costume paints a turn of the century daydream. It’s not really about the horses though, it’s about the hats.