Île de Ré

Île de Ré needs 2 days: biking through the villages of white houses with green shutters, like Saint-Martin-de-Ré and Ars-en-Ré, on one, and visiting the salt marshes where fleur de sel is hand-harvested, on the other. June-September brings ideal beach weather. It's expensive, a second-home destination for wealthy Parisians. Connected to the mainland by a nearly 3 km bridge since 1988, it's entirely flat, which made it a cycling paradise with over 100 km of paths, and its artisanal sea salt production still follows the same hand-harvesting method used since the Middle Ages.