So you have finally decided that this year you’re gonna spend your vacation in France. Well done. I guess you’re about to travel in summer so there is still some time to prepare everything to make the trip absolutely perfect. Today I have two tips that will make your trip easier and more enjoyable.

Guides
Do yourself a favour and purchase at least two, better three guides and pay attention to buy the most current editions. 2009 editions of the most famous guide books should be out by now or will be in the upcoming weeks. Rough Guides or Lonely Planet Guides are well known for their independent view and they are a great choice for backpackers. These are in-depth guides printed in small letters on a thin paper to pack as much information as possible and still keep the volume small enough to fit into your luggage. If you prefer plenty of colourful photographs on a quality paper, then you will do better with Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Travel Guides or National Geographic Guides. My preference is to take one of each type. But don’t be fooled just by stunning photographs, most likely your real experience won’t get even close to what you see on the photographs. But hey, we all know that photographs in guide books have been retouched and the photographers had been waiting for hours if not days for the perfect setup to make the photographs. And that is a luxury that you can hardly afford. Do study your guides before you leave, so that you can better plan your trip. You will know exactly where to go (or where/when not to go), and what can be seen there.

Language
You have heard of French being proud of their language and although they learn English at school, they hesitate to use it. Well, what can I say about it? More or less it’s true, but you would be surprised by the change in their attitude if you show some respect for their language. You are a guest in their country so it makes more sense to make the first step. I can’t stress enough how important it is for you to learn a couple of phrases and a bunch of the most common french words if you want to get the most out of your trip to France. You’ll be amazed to see how far a little french will go. It will literally open doors to their culture. If they see that you try, they will even start speaking English. Well that is a bit too optimistic, but they will understand what you say in English and they might respond with a mix of English and french. But with help of mimics and hand you will get your message across, that’s for sure. Don’t be scared by learning a totally foreign language. When you start, you will see that french is actually very close to English. Many times words are spelled the same and differ only in pronunciation. There are some great resources on the net that will help you get up and running with the basics of French either completely for free or for a very reasonable fee. BBC offers basic language courses for holidaymakers, and French is very well covered even with pronunciation. Check out the BBC website. If you are an iPod owner, you will find some very good French learning podcasts on iTunes.

In one of my future posts I will bring you a few links to proven guides and french learning websites that will make your holiday in France easier. Stay tuned!

If you are wondering when is the best time of the year to visit France, I am afraid I have no simple answer for you. Why? Because it depends on what you expect from your holiday. Since France offers so many ways to spend your holidays at every time of the year, you have to decide what you are after.

In general there are three seasons to consider. Winter, Summer, and Spring & Autumn.

If you’re a savvy skier the winter is your definite choice. French ski season starts in the Pyrenees and Alps in December and continues until March with its peak in February.

Summer months of July and August are the peak season of the year. Tourists from all over the world rush to France. Most French people get their holidays in August and especially South of France is terribly overcrowded. Prices of accommodation and airfare are through the roof. Unless you really have to, try to avoid August at all costs.

In the end we are left with Spring & Autumn. May, June, and September are just gorgeous months to visit France. You can save up to 50 % of the summer rates on accommodation in villas in France and yet enjoy the country at its best but with less hassle, less crowds, and left with more to enjoy.

But please don’t get me wrong. You can spend a wonderful vacation in France in July or even August as well as in October or November. It only depends on your preferences. Wine lovers won’t come before November when the Beaujolais Nouveau arrives. If you are into truffle hunting then your season starts in November, too.  And Christmas in Paris is simply enchanting.

There is no single month to be voted for as the best time of the year to visit France because France is beautiful all year round. There is simply no wrong time to go.

Technorati Tags: France vacation, holidays in france, when to go to France

Since you have come across this website then you must be definitely considering renting a villa in France. But the question is whether this is the right option for you. Today’s article should give you a hint.

It is not an accident that France is the world’s #1 holiday destination country. And it has been so for many years. Actually it has been so ever since the very beginning of the travel industry. France is well aware of this fact and does its best to use its popularity to its advantage. Not only France invests lots of money for its presentation abroad, but it makes sure that you won’t be disappointed when visit the country. You can find a tourist office in every city or near a popular holiday place. Free guides as well as helpful advice is always at your hand.

First time visitors to France usually underestimate the potential of the country and do a common mistake of planning their holiday to spend each day at a different location. The whole holiday becomes a single big rush interrupted only by pressing the button on a camera to catch every unforgettable moment. Well, this is a traditional Japanese way of spending holidays. But hey! We are not Japanese. I am not gonna teach you how to spend your holiday, it’s all up to you. I can only give you a piece of advice. For the first visit of France you should plan at least two weeks, three weeks if you can afford it. Try to visit each region of France. Not each city or a historical monument, just each region. This way you’ll get a feel for what France has to offer you and next time you can focus just on one or two regions. The regions of France offer such diverse experience, that I am absolutely sure everyone finds his or her favourite place.

So next time you visit France you know exactly where to go and explore the place in more detail without rush and actually enjoy your holiday much much more. You’ll see that the second, third and fourth visits to France will bring you higher satisfaction than your first visit. When planning to stay a week at one location you can use a new option that has been unavailable for a shorter time visits. The rental of a chateau, a holiday villa, or a holiday apartment depending on your dream location and budget. That’s a totally different experience than a stay in a hotel. Far from it. Large hotels are designed to suite common standards and expectations of international visitors. This intentions however lead to uniformity. You can hardly tell a difference between a room in a Hilton in Paris, Munich or Prague. Therefore your overall experience is less authentic if you stay in a such hotel. If you have small children you know inconvenient it is being limited by the hotels rules and so many other tourists around you. In these situations it is much more convenient to enjoy the privacy of a rented house. Not only you can cook for your children their favourite meal whenever they ask you, but you don’t care about next door tourists when your child start crying in the middle of the night. You can open up a bottle of beer and stretch you legs on the balcony over viewing a beautiful garden. That is the kind of holiday that makes me happy.

So what’s the conclusion? If you are on your first time visit of France, stick to bed & breakfast or smaller hotels, beacuse you you’ll be staying maximum of two nights in a row at one place. But when you intend to spend at least one week at a single location consider renting a villa or a cottage, especially if you are travelling with a family. Not only is it more comfortable and more authentic than a hotel, but it can be also more cost effective. I shall write in more detail about pricing of accommodation in France in one of my future posts. For now just trust me.

As I mentioned in the beginning of this article, France is well aware of its popularity and it has a lot to offer to holiday travellers. Accommodation facilities are no exception. Holiday villa rentals has long tradition in France (as well as in Spain or Italy, since these countries are popular holiday destination for many Europeans) so you can expect a vast selection of villas, cottages and chateaux ready to accommodate you during your holiday stay in France.

Technorati Tags: holiday villa rental in France, holiday villas in France

Let’s be honest. Why would anyone start a new website from scratch on a topic that has been around for years? There are literally hundreds if not thousands of websites offering lists of villas, cottages, bed & breakfast or chateau accommodation. Just go the Google and search for any combination of the aforementioned keywords and add ‘France’ so that you get only websites related to France. So far so good. But if you go through a couple of these sites, you’ll notice that most of them are nothing but lists of accommodation facilities. In many cases the websites mix offerings from the whole world and they are hard to navigate. They are so complex that you need to be a computer expert to find what you are actually looking for. So I decided there must another way to present the information to occasional holiday travellers. Being a professional web designer for almost 10 years I have enough experience and knowledge to start, develop and maintain a website which has no smaller ambitions than being a No. 1 source of information for France holiday makers. Although a brave statement at the first sight, I am quite confident. At this moment I am not sure about the final look of the website. Definitely there are going to be many changes in structure and graphics over the course of time. The website starts as a blog but this is not for good. When I get to a point where the blog functionality won’t suffice to support the functions needed to serve the purpose of the website, I will switch to a regular web application. But that’s far ahead.

What can you expect for the future? First of all, we need to make up the list of places of interest in France. Next we add more information about each place with references to other website that cover the particular place in more depth. As the content expand we will need a way to organize and search through it. What I am missing most on other websites is a thorough in-depth info on organizing the holiday in France. What should you expect from your journey, how should you prepare, all those FAQ related to going abroad with your family. There are so many thing to consider before you take off. This section is gonna be huge. And I expect you the readers to participate, too. Not only in the discussions below each post, but please do not hesitate to write me an e-mail using the contact form. I am online every day and I’ll do my best to answer the same day. The website would not be complete without the list of available accommodation facilities. And what a list! There aren’t gonna be thousands of listings. No way. I want to keep it concise and list just those facilities where I would love to stay myself. This site is for you, guys. I would like to avoid the sales pitch as much as possible. And if you feel that something seems a bit odd, let me know. Hopefully, with your help the Villas in France website will reach its goal. The sooner the better, for all of us.

Technorati Tags: holidays in france

Today I discovered a hidden gem in Google Maps. So far I was using a default icon for marking a spot on the map. I was wondering how I could differentiate between several types of holiday destination, ie. sport facilities, historical monuments, and other wonders of the french world. And you know what, Google allows you to choose from a set of 98 different icons for each mark on the map. But wait! You can even create your own icons and use them alongside the predefined ones. And that’s pretty cool. Now we can design our own unique icons and that rocks.

While adding more spots on the map I discovered that the map is geeting overcrowded. I might change the website theme to accomodate a larger map. That would come in handy also for displaying the addition info for each spot. If you display the popup buble on the current map, you can hardly see anything but the popup because it covers the whole map.

I have changed the default display mode of the map beacuse the satellite map was harder to navigate and now the marks are also better visible. Don’t you think?

I believe I can add a few more spots over the weekend and don’t forget to submit your favourite holiday destinations and villas in France that might be of interest to others, too.

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