Bordeaux recipe: Canelés

When planning my 60th birthday celebration, my sister and I stumbled upon France Just For You, which saved us from the potential nightmare of traveling with 40 strangers on a bus. As a result, my sister and I, along with our husbands, experienced a trip of a lifetime! From the beginning, Emilie was extraordinarily responsive, informative, and more than accommodating to our wishes, both before and during the trip. For example, my sister and her husband experienced travel delays, and Emilie immediately offered to arrange alternative travel from Paris to our first destination in the Loire Valley. Before our travels began, Emilie sent us keepsake book, detailing our daily itineraries, replete with scheduled activities, restaurant suggestions, and optional excursions.Traveling through the Loire Valley, Normandy, and Paris for 12 days, each day was more spectacular than the previous one. The B&B near Chenonceau was a fantastic introduction to quintessentially French hospitality, charm, food, wine, and culture. From there we experienced true luxury in a serene setting in a chateau, where unexpectedly dinner was served (complete with vegetables from the castle's organic gardens). The B&B in Normandy was most memorable for the genteel hospitality of our host, Comte, who shared tales of his family through the centuries, including the arrest of his father in the foyer of the chateau due to his resistance activities against the Gestapo during WWII. The Count's son and his girlfriend served us a lovely meal around a stone fireplace in their charming apartment on the gorgeous chateau grounds. Thinking we had already experienced the best that France had to offer, we were blown away when we arrived at the B&B near Bayeux, warmly and creatively appointed. Finally, while less extravagant, the Hotel in Paris was equally as charming as our previous accommodations, located in a neighborhood teaming with cafes and shops in close proximity to all of the amazing sites that Paris has to offer! All of our hosts were extraordinarily gracious, serving us homemade French delicacies each morning and offering us helpful suggestions for making the most of each day. All in all, due to Emilie's fastidious planning, the trip was beyond perfect and exceeded our wildest dreams of a French vacation.

You gave me so many good suggestions that honestly, I just walked everywhere you recommended, with something breathtaking around every corner. The guidebook was great and the suggestion to make an effort to try
French was a solid one. I did much better once I got comfortable trying.

I will recommend your service to anyone I know thinking at coming to France.
Merci Beaucoup !

We just returned from a fantastic three weeks in Southwest France. I highly recommend the services of France Just For You, we could never have planned the trip ourselves as well as they did.

Laura did the planning and gave us an amazing itinerary, and was available at a moment's notice when we had a plane cancellation on our flight to Bordeaux and would be arriving at our first B&B around midnight instead of the planned arrival time of 5:00 p.m. This was our fourth trip to France, and having someone else do the planning made it one of our best trips.

Emilie,
You have created for us the most outstanding well planned vacation possible. We have thoroughly enjoyed following your suggestions each day-- each choice well selected specifically for us. And even when things didn't go perfectly-- like a flat tire on the rental car or a pilot's strike which resulted in the cancellation of our
light, you still remained by our side and managed the process until a solution was reached.
We can't thank you enough for your remarkable service. Our vacation to France would have been entirely different and not as interesting without you. Thank you
for everything,

We were overwhelmed by the wealth of information available when attempting to plan our 6 week self drive holiday in France. Never having been to France before we found the task daunting and sifting through forums full of information only confused us.
We have traveled in New Zealand using a New Zealand based travel adviser and decided to look into using a similar company for this trip.
So glad we did. We found France Just For You and felt as though we were on the right track. After lots of communication with Laura we came up with an itinerary that proved to be terrific. Our accommodation was all fantastic, suggestions of things to do and places to eat, rental car was organised even down to the all important places to park.
We had an unforgettable holiday made so much better on the recommendations of France Just For You. We highly recommend this company if you are wanting guidance for your holiday in France.

We normally craft our own trips or join a small group tour. This time, we decided to try Emilie and Guillaume's tailored holiday service to enjoy southern France in a way we wouldn't have otherwise done.
It was an excellent experience in every way and we recommend them highly. The BnB's chosen , the sightseeing and dining suggestions made as well as the rental car arrange all were a pleasure.