With great food, great culture and some areas of great natural beauty, France has plenty to offer. Generally, I have found that the south is friendlier than the north; Paris probably has the reputation for being least friendly, which is to some extent justified, but I know lots of nice people from there too, and the attractions of the city make up for it. The art and the architecture is wonderful.
France are one of the leading countries in Europe when it comes to high speed railways, which makes it easy and efficient to get around. At least, it does when they're not busy having a strike (which makes for a chaotic trip that is memorable for all the wrong reasons; crowded doesn't even come close to describing the Paris metro when that's happening).
Sometimes the problem isn't that people don't speak English, but that they don't want to. :-) I manage the various politenesses in French, but that's about it, and have had no problems getting by. Menus are probably the hardest things to deal with - even French people who speak good English often struggle to really capture what the dish is when translating. So I usually just ask, what animal did it come from, and what bit of the animal. :-)
