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Paris's ubiquitous cafes provide front-row seats for the city's charms.
Photograph by Steven Greaves, My Shot
"How," Charles de Gaulle once asked, "can anyone be expected to govern a country that produces 265 different cheeses?" • The largest nation in western Europe, reaching from the English Channel and the Atlantic in the north to the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean in the south, le pays français is a mix of many different countries. • The Celtic Bretons couldn't be more different from Peter Mayle's epicurious characters in Provence. • Gustave Flaubert savaged the life of the small-town bourgeoisie, yet it is from the country that the nation's breathtaking gustatory and enological gifts come.
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