Recipe for Riz à la Catalane

We have traveled in Europe a dozen times. Our trip to France, the Loire Valley and Normandy was one of the very best. Their custom self-guided tours are based on places and activities that interest you. Emelie listened to what we wanted and created an itinerary that was just what we wanted as well as some suggestions for other things we might try. Emelie created a spiral bound book with information about traveling in France as well as detailed information about the B & Bs, maps, directions and all the places we planned to visit. The B & Bs were lovely old stone buildings with modern comforts. A private cooking class, a private tour of an ancient church in the mountains, and a guided tour of Normandy were features we really enjoyed. The chateaus and gardens [my personal favorites] were magnificent. Normandy was so moving. I am glad that we had a guide who spent the entire day with just us. We learned and saw so many things we would have missed on our own. We would urge you to consider France Just for You. We loved our trip and would use them again. GPS was a life saver.

Laura and Emilie planned such a professional, authentic and fantastic trip that it has become one of my favorite vacations! Excursions, accommodations, and suggested activities were flawless -- such that the only difficult decision for us was what to select from scrumptious French cuisine. I was hesitant at first to trust an unknown online trip planner, but I'm so glad I did. Knowing France from the inside made all the difference. The specific tips about traveling in France made our first driving experience actually enjoyable! We drove out of Paris, visited Normandy, Mont St. -Michel, Loire Valley, Provence, Burgundy and Nice!

We would highly recommend “France Just for You” and will most defiantly use the services of Emilie again. At the end of April 2017 we spend two weeks in France visiting Normandy, Mont Saint Michel, Lorie Valley and Paris. We can would sum the trip in one word “Perfect!”. Emilie well prepared us with a personalized book, (179 pages) , describing our accommodations, things to see and the history of the area. She gave great recommendations of restaurants, sights and always provided the GPS coordinates which were invaluable. All of the B&B accommodations were wonderful with welcoming host that spoke English. I cannot tell how easy Emilie made traveling abroad for us, we looked forward to what each and every day would bring, except of the last day when we had to leave.

I communicated directly with Emilie who is very serious about their business of providing self guided tours. She prepared a proposal that matched what I had requested. Payment arrangements were easy. We really got to visit with local people. We rarely saw a tour bus. France - Just For You arranged visits with guides (wine tasting day in St. Emilion area and visit to Les Combarelles & Font de Gaume---small historic caves) to places we would never have found on our own. The guides were passionate and knowledgable. The personalized guidebook was essential as most commercially available guidebooks tell you want the author thinks is important which may not be what the reader is interested in. More than once I said ”What does Emilie's book say?” The book is laid out with more suggestions than you can do in one day. This is good because for example it was easy to adjust our plans on the day the weather turned bad. The whole package started at the airport with a car ready as promised and ended with easy car rental return. The B&Bs were exactly as described with enthusiastic hosts who were conversational in English.

So helpful and thoughtful! We had an amazing trip thanks to their planning and insights. Highly recommend, especially if you don’t have time to research places on your own. All the b&bs were beautiful, restaurant recommendations fantastic, great suggestions of routes and stops on our longer drives and having the cell phone with our guide book already downloaded on it made travelling a breeze!

It's hard to know where to begin. We stumbled across France Just For You by accident when researching ideas for our three week visit to France. We made contact with Emily by email and began a conversation over the coming weeks as she planned a self-guided holiday for us, designed to fulfil our dream of staying in French b'n'bs in wine-growing regions as well as outdoor/sporting activities, finishing in Paris at the French Open. Her network and knowledge of b'n'bs, restaurants, activities etc is exceptional and her organisational skills are amazing and simply add confidence for the traveller from another part of the world. Emily organised all our accomodation, transport, car hire, entry tickets to Roland Garros, Palace of Versailles, theatre, cooking classes, bike hire and produced a 400 page travel manual tailored individually for us. I'm not sure I could unbundle exactly what we paid for her work but I promise you it was worth every cent. Our travel manual was laid out with a plan and schedule for every day of our trip, with gps coordinates for every location we needed to get to. Even if I were a seasoned traveller to France I would still recommend FJFY as it took all the stress out of planning and executing our trip, as well as taking us to places we would never have imagined. If I could give Emily more than 5 stars I would do so gladly! Thank you Emily for making our trip so memorable.