Review of French Tourism for 2011

2011 has been a successful year for French Tourism, with increases in numbers of tourists visiting various historic and cultural sites.(http://www.francesoir.fr/actualite/societe/patrimoine-le-chateau-de-chambord-veut-defier-le-mont-saint-michel-171817.html)
Mont Saint-Michel again reported the greatest number of visitors with about 3,000,000 visiting the fabulous site in the famous Bay of Mont Saint-Michel.  However a competitor site which hopes to catch up by 2019 is the famous château de Chambord  in the Loire, which had an increase of 50,000 visitors for 2011 year to hit a record of 780,000.

The Ministry of Culture also announced good results regarding attendance of museums, which grew 5% in 2011 with a total of 27 million !
the Museum of the Louvre, had 8.8 million, an increase for the fourth consecutive year. It is ahead of the Palace of Versailles (more than 6 million), the Pompidou Centre (3.6 million, an increase of 15%!) and the musée d'Orsay (3.1 million).

Where did you visit this year ? And can you recommend anywhere either on this list or some hidden gems that are not usually mentioned ? We certainly love the theme park Puy du Fou which is listed as having over a million visitors a year.

The most popular theme park is still the two Disneyland, Paris parcs which receive 14.5 million visitors a year and the Parc based around the French character Astérix, Parc Astérix near Paris which has 1.6 million visitors a year ! The Futuroscope theme park at Poitiers has 1.6 million visitors a year.

And of course we cant forget The Eiffel Tower in Paris which has 6.8 million paying visitors a year although I am sure a lot more who just go along to take a photograph !
Another popular sites to give a try is the La Villette science museum in Paris which has around 3 million visitors.
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Tickets for France tourist attractions and Groupon too - Good websites to follow

I found a couple of interesting websites this week which might be worth investigating if you are looking for holiday bargains.

First of all there is a ticket observer website http://www.ticketobserver.fr/ which might find you some deals on tickets for tourist attractions in France. It might also give you some ideas of places to visit near where you are camping.

And the other website I found is the French Groupon site http://www.groupon.fr/  I follow this in the UK and have managed to get some deals for restaurant meals. You have to follow a particular city so I imagine you could follow the city near where you are planning to go on holiday. I have done this for France and it came up straight away with a farm visit and also an F1 simulator experience near where we are going on holiday as well as a deal for a weekend at a Gite - so could be worth trying out.

Has anyone got any experiences of these sites - either good or bad to let us know about ? Or any other useful sites to recommend ?

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Downloadable Brochures - Guides to French Cities and Regions

If you are researching next year's holiday then you will find lots of useful brochures that can be downloaded at http://uk.franceguide.com/brochures/home.html?NodeID=409

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French Federation of Cycle Tourism

Federation Francaise de Cyclotourisme !
Great website !

http://www.ffct.org/

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100 sites from 100 Departements

100 sites or views that are emblematic of the 100 different "Departements" or Regions in France. Can you guess the one for the "Departement" where you are going on holiday ?

http://www.linternaute.com/sortir/magazine/100-departements/

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