France Travel Guide: Things to Do, Time Zone, Currency and Getting Around

Alsace sits inside the Schengen zone, so visitors may stay up to 90 days within any rolling 180-day window under the shared rules. Your nationality decides the rest: some passports travel visa-free for a short holiday, while others must get a short-stay Schengen visa in advance.

The official France-Visas  site has a tool that tells you what applies to your nationality. If you need a visa and France is your only or main destination, you apply to France even if you land in Basel. Documents, appointments and fees are in our France visa guide .

In winter, mainland French clocks run on CET, one hour ahead of UTC; in summer they move to CEST, two hours ahead. Summer time starts on the final Sunday of March and ends on the final Sunday of October.

The whole of mainland France, Corsica included, sits in this one time zone, so the Strasbourg time zone is the same as in Paris or Marseille. Overseas territories such as Guadeloupe, Réunion or French Polynesia keep their own local time.

When it is noon in Strasbourg, it is 11:00 in London and 06:00 in New York for most of the year. The US changes its clocks on different dates (second Sunday of March, first Sunday of November), so for a few weeks in spring and autumn the gap with New York is five hours instead of six.

• Currency: what is the France currency called? The euro (€). Before the euro, France used the French franc; euro notes and coins replaced it in 2002.
• Language: the official language is French. In Alsace you will also hear Alsatian, a local dialect close to German, which is why so many village and street names look German. A few basics are in our French phrases for travellers  page.
• Internet: how to get mobile data abroad without roaming charges is in our eSIM guide .

For Alsace we did not fly into Paris; we flew into Basel. EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg (BSL) sits on French soil right at the Swiss border. From the airport's French exit, a bus runs to Saint-Louis station, and from there the regional TER trains continue into Alsace.

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By train, Basel to Colmar takes 37 minutes at the fastest and Basel to Strasbourg 75 to 90 minutes, with trains between Strasbourg and Colmar all day (Omio, October 2026).

If you are coming from Paris, the TGV to Strasbourg leaves from Gare de l'Est and takes about 1 hour 46 minutes. Riquewihr and Kaysersberg have no station; Fluo buses run there from Colmar.

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The capital of France is Paris. There is no Paris guide on this page because our France trip was limited to Alsace, and we do not write about places we have not been. The main city of Alsace is Strasbourg, where the European Parliament holds its plenary sessions. Since 2016 the region has been part of the larger Grand Est administrative region.

Where is France? In Western Europe, with the English Channel to the north, the Atlantic to the west and the Mediterranean to the south. Mainland France borders eight countries: Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, Andorra and Spain. Alsace, the region we toured, is in the northeast corner, with Germany just across the Rhine.

Fun Things to Do in France: Our Alsace Favourites

• Walk Colmar after dark: after dinner we walked the old town again with the Christmas lights on, and it became our favourite hour of the trip.
• Take a canal boat in Petite France: in December the Strasbourg boats sold out for weeks, so book before you travel.
• Loop around walled Riquewihr: one morning, about two hours, free, with a sesame and poppy seed pretzel from a street stall.
• Stand on the 1501 bridge in Kaysersberg: half-timbered houses along the Weiss stream, with the castle on the hill behind.
• Visit Haut-Koenigsbourg Castle: a medieval castle on the Vosges slopes, looking out over the Alsace plain.

Our list of things to do in France is short and honest: it covers only the best things to do in France that we have seen ourselves, and so far they are all in one region, Alsace, which we toured in December 2023. On a map of French cities that region is the northeast corner, next to the German border.

Alsace now has its own page: our Alsace, France region guide  brings together the map, getting there, the Christmas markets, where to stay and the food. For tourist things to do town by town, start with these guides:

• Cities: things to do in Strasbourg  and where to stay in Strasbourg ; things to do in Colmar  and where to stay in Colmar .
• Villages: Obernai , Riquewihr  and Kaysersberg .

For things to do in France in December, each of these towns holds a Christmas market: see our Strasbourg Christmas market  and Colmar Christmas market  guides, or the wider comparison in the best Christmas markets in Europe . Hotels across the country, Paris included, are compared in where to stay in France .