Something I love about France is how good they've been, by and large, about not falling into the compromise trap. In the U.S., people wanted the best of both w

Something I love about France is how good they've been, by and large, about not falling into the compromise trap. In the U.S., people wanted the best of both worlds and ended up with the suburbs, the worst of both worlds, an absolute pain to drive anywhere and their lawns as some kind of cruel facsimile of nature. In France, many towns simply do not have sprawling suburbs and subdivisions, but transition abruptly from pastoral countryside to bustling town. From Bayeux to Besançon you can easily live in the countryside and still walk only a couple miles into a sizable town.