French Travel Blog

An experience OF France, not just a trip TO France.

For over 30 years my wife has dreamed of visiting the Loire region of France. Emilie and Laura not only made this a reality, they made it truly a dream trip.

The multi-hundred page guidebook not only guided our daily itinerary, it prepared us for what we needed to know for a successful self-guided tour throughout the region. This was invaluable, as we learned many of the cultural things we needed to know to most fully participate in the experience of French life.

And to speak of the itinerary... WOW! The choices and details, from how to see Chenonceau from every angle, to the private vineyard tour and wine tasting, to the little-known liqueur distillery, to the personal touches based on our wishes. Even now, as we look back at our pictures and think on our memories, it seems a dream. Friends, some of whom had visited France, marveled at our pictures and stories.

We can't wait for our next experience of France. And we look forward to Emilie and Laura being our guides.

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.

We like to travel independently and Emilie was fantastic in providing us everything we needed to do so. We had wonderful information to read beforehand and received maps and GPS coordinates to get us where we needed to go.This is a great service to use to set up your hotel and car arrangements along with suggested itineraries that can be modified. We will use her for another trip to a different part of France.

One would think driving in a different country where cars are on the wrong side of the road and you don’t speak the language for 11 day trip would not be a smart decision. France Just for You is definitely the travel consultant you go to. Emilie’s very quick replies to queries, personal knowledge of having been to places recommended and organisation skills for minute details, makes them truly reliable.

From getting us a French smartphone complete with the necessary apps to help us navigate and keep us connected , and also providing us with a personalised guidebook that dictates step-by step advice on what to look out for, GPS guide on where to go , where to park, how to use the parking machines/toll machines/even pumping gas (complete with images of where to slot in your cards) , made our travelling around and navigation practically stress-free!

Emilie crafted itineraries which allows my family of four , each with different interests ( from WWII millitary historical sites to a whole new world of Chateaus ,medieval villages ,flower gardens , immersive artworks, sunset and fantastic night sky , to cooking French cuisines) experiences to treasure and remember.

We had a half day guide in Paris, Raphaelle, who is truly knowledgeable about art , history and architecture. We visited Picasso Museum and because the artwork there were not laid out chronologically, Raphaelle made it easily understandable by showing us through her own folder of personal compilations of the Master’s progress of life encounters and artworks (which should be made into a book) that ties in to the art pieces on display, it provided us with so many aha moments.

Merci beaucoup France Just For You!

If I had to sum up our trip in one word it would just have to be WOW! But of course it is impossible to describe the trip of a lifetime in just one word. The detail and care that Emilie put into planning our trip was AMAZING. Every place we stayed, every outing she planned, every person that she put us in contact was wonderful. My husband and I wanted so much to visit Fance but we did not want to go on a bus with 20 other people. We dont speak any French, so how would a trip through France be possible? Have France Just for You make all the plans. Along with resevering all the B and B's we stayed in and planning wine tasting and excursions we had so many other recommendations for places to dine, sights to see, hikes through the countryside, no matter what we were in the mood for, there was always a recommendation that we could use. When we were told that we would be getting a personal itinerary we were expecting a 10 or 12 page document. Instead a 200 page personalized BOOK came. We will treasure it forever. I think it was Kismet that we found France Just For You online. Thank you so, so much for the time and care you gave to planning our trip. It was special and we will always think of our trip and you with the fondest of memories.

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.