France Trip.

Bruxelles is a nice city to visit: good restaurants, art galleries, antiques, etc... Pretty much what you would expect from a city where a lot of money is flowing continuously from lobbyists, lawyers or expatriated state servants with a high payroll and a lot of free time from various european coutries.
Brittany in august can be nice, but it's frequently rainy around 15th. I go to the south of the Finistere every year during summer and august is usually not the best month if you like beaches and sun.
Alsace is pretty nice in august, especially Colmart where you can walk in the nearby mountains or through the vines : the small towns there are charming.

!luc

Bruges, the Venice of the North, is in Western Belgium. It will be full of tourists in August, but worth the train ride from Lille.

A restaurant (more a bistro) to visit would be: "De Refter".

Hey,

I'm a grad student who is living in Paris right now with my French girlfriend, so with countless trips with her and her family I have quite a few recommendations for you, any more info on what you're looking for or anything special you would like to see? Wine, history/culture, great bargains, romance, any splurge ideas?

Someone mentioned Alsace, the Champagne and Bourgogne wine regions are also very close on the TGV (Reims is like 40 mins away with many daily departures from Gare de l'est and cost us like 25 euros a piece roundtrip when we went in March) Bourgogne has some pretty charming villages as well, but a car is pretty nice to have for the convenience factor of getting to some of the smaller quaint ones.

You probably already know, but traveling in France tends to cost a bit more in August and quite a few things can be closed with so much of the country on vacation, I would also avoid the south of France in August...

Btw, if you are planning on staying in Paris for most of the trip to use it as a launching point, or just a while, I'm looking to sublet our one-bedroom apartment over some of the summer to help balance out rent since we won't be there for most of the summer, would def be cheaper than hotels for 2 weeks or so, lmk if you're interested at all. If not btw, I can also recommend several hotels ranging from budget to chateaux, including one in Chantilly that ran a huge special around that time last year (around $100 a night for a really nice stay complete with lots of Hermes bath products

Anyways, I'm actually heading back to the U.S. now for a little bit, so I'll check back and fill in more later.

Jared,

How did the trip end up? I am planning a trip as well for the last two weeks of August and am thinking of Paris (+ Versailles), Amsterdam, Normandy, wine regions (burgundy, bordeaux, champage, maybe chablis, and maybe cognac), Nice/St Tropez/Marseilles, and perhaps Monaco.