YOUR HOST & CURATOR
Meet Stephanie.
I'LL KEEP IT BRIEF. (jk I won't).
Hi, I'm your resident Francophile.
Mom. Former ER nurse. Classically trained pastry chef. Arguably France's most enthusiastic unsolicited opinion-giver.
I have strong opinions about where to eat lunch. And where to eat dinner. I've driven unreasonable distances for a bite of cheese. My standards are probably not normal.
At some point I realized I'd accumulated an embarrassing amount of knowledge about France (the right restaurants, the overlooked villages, the things worth doing and the things that will waste your afternoon) and that my friends kept calling me before every trip. So I figured if everyone was coming to me anyway, I might as well just take them there myself.
You're going to want to come with me.
That cheese isn't going to eat itself.
— Stephanie, on why she built this
A VALID QUESTION: WHY FRANCE?
France doesn't apologize for the butter. Neither do I.
Nobody is sorry about the butter. Nobody is skipping the cheese course. Nobody is doing a quick workout before breakfast to "earn" the croissant. The French looked at the concept of guilt and said non, merci, and honestly we should all be taking notes.
But here's the thing nobody tells you about France: the magic isn't in the monuments. It's in the jeweler in Gordes who doesn't have a website. The truffle farmer who's been working the same land for forty years. The winemaker who opens a bottle he wasn't planning to because he likes the way you asked about it. The market vendor who slips you an extra taste because you showed up curious.
I design retreats built around those people. The ones who are genuinely excited to share what they love with someone willing to slow down long enough to receive it. Yes, we eat extraordinarily well. Yes, there will be Michelin restaurants and private chef dinners and a cheese course that changes your life. But the part women can't stop talking about when they get home isn't the food. It's the feeling of being genuinely let in somewhere.
France does that. My job is to make sure you never feel like a tourist.
