This week’s travel dream: A pilgrimage along France’s Route 66

Route Nationale 7 is the ultimate French connection, said Robert Camuto in The Washington Post. Linking Paris to the Côte d’Azur’s sparkling Mediterranean shores, the path of France’s foremost thoroughfare was first laid out in the late 19th century. It wasn’t until after World War II, however, that the trunk road became legendary. Like Route 66 in America, N7 was memorialized in French pop culture, even as it began to fall into neglect following the construction of larger expressways in the late ’60s. On “a mission to drive every inch” of this famous stretch of asphalt, I set out in search of “La France Profonde—or deep France.”

I picked up my Renault Twingo near N7’s starting point, the Porte d’Italie, and drove southeast through the Paris suburbs, a concrete jungle of apartment buildings and McDonald’s franchises. Yet soon the “concrete yielded to countryside,” and I found myself engulfed by the Fontaine­bleau Forest. These “80,000 acres of dense oak, pine, beech, chestnut, maple, and birch trees” were cherished by centuries of French royalty and artists such as Renoir and Monet. From there, I took a short detour to Barbizon—the commune that gave its name to the school of plein-air painters whose work inspired the impressionists. The “tree-lined streets, the birds that chirp as if on cue, the weathered tile roofs on the stately homes”—they all painted a “picture from storybook France.”

As I headed farther south, my pilgrimage revealed some of the country’s hidden gems. In the Loire Valley, I passed a faded roadside chapel that bore the inscription Notre Dame de La Route Guidez-Nous (“Our Lady of the Road, Guide Us”). In the Auvergne region, I discovered Moulins, “one of central France’s most elegant towns,” and fell in love with the Charolais beef at Le Grand Café, a “more-than-a-century-old art nouveau brasserie.” In Valence, I ate a Michelin-worthy meal at Maison Pic, the family restaurant of chef Anne-Sophie Pic, the only Frenchwoman ever awarded three stars. Leaving Valence, the scenery changed, from the lush Rhône river valley to the hills and vineyards of Provence. Cruising past olive groves, fruit orchards, and rows of plane trees, I closed in on the Mediterranean.

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Contact: Avignon-et-provence.com/museums/rn7