The town of Nîmes goes all out for Christmas, with thousands of lights and giant candy canes all along the streets. It might just be the most festive city in France!

Sakado (a play on sac à dos, “backpack”) is an organization that helps the homeless of France by collecting backpacks filled with all of life’s essentials, from hygienic products to books. As this article reports, homelessness is one of France’s biggest domestic problems.

The original lyricism, the striking rhythms, and the fragile melodies of up-and-coming singer-songwriter Buridane have made her career take off. She’s now launching a tour all over France and has been asked to perform at several big music festivals.

Take a look behind the scenes in Lyon as members of the women’s fencing organization “Le Masque de Fer” compete for a spot in the upcoming World Cup. Club leader Corinne Maitrejean is sure to get one.

The members of the Lyon-based group Instinct Lyrical are into “intergenerational” rap—rap they hope will have a message for their neighbors of all ages.

International soccer in South Africa isn’t just for the World Cup! A group of eight kids from Lyon has the chance to win big—on and off the field—thanks to the “Sport in the City” association.

Hop aboard the Trolley des Lumières bus restaurant and dine in style while sightseeing through the city of Lyon. An unforgettable dining experience!

"Un Petit Noir" (or "A Small Black," a slang term for a small black coffee) is the bookstore café in Lyon specializing not only in gourmet coffees, but also in detective novels and thrillers. Besides crime fiction and caffeine, the store also serves some great jazz concerts to add to the "noir" ambiance.

If you're a comic book lover, you might want to hop on a plane to Lyon, which has held a huge comic book festival for the past ten years. This year, they're even launching a monthly comics magazine called "The Streets of Lyon."

Meet Sheldon, the friendly robot with friendly eyes that flash little hearts when it interacts with people. Sheldon is a huge attraction at tech fairs, where it is used to entertain and delight the crowds. It certainly lives up to the task.

The "Doubles" exhibition at the Dini Museum in Villefranche-sur-Saône explores the role of the double in art history in all its forms—from mirror effects, to diptychs, to self-portraits—through works spanning from the Renaissance to the present day.

Zombies from many different eras have invaded Lyon! That is, zombie enthusiasts with impressive makeup and costumes have invaded. The ninth-annual Zombie Walk has attracted around a thousand of the undead to roam across the city under the theme "a return to the past."

Audrey is a practitioner of yarn bombing, a street art movement originating from the United States. You'll find her art all over the city of Lyon. She crochets colorful pieces that she uses to cover anything that takes her fancy, from bicycle seats to lamp posts and a few statues.

Why not bring the orchestra to the people instead of the people going to the orchestra? That's exactly what the Lyon Villeurbanne Symphony Orchestra did. They brought the opera Carmen to the bowling alley in the town of Mornant so that people would not have to travel hundreds of miles to enjoy the show.

Take a tour of this family-run cookie factory in Chaillé-les-Marais, where each family member is responsible for a different stage of production, from harvesting the wheat to packaging the final product. They take the idea of "homemade" to a whole new level!