Luxury holidays to France

Luxury holidays to France from Expressions Holidays. We have 30 years’ experience in offering luxury, tailor-made holidays for individuals featuring a personal selection of luxurious hotels, full of regional and local charm and character, which offer exceptionally high standards of comfort, service, facilities and cuisine. Many of our personally selected luxury hotels are among the most acclaimed in France; others abound in rustic local French character and charm and often occupy converted chateaux, water-mills or country mansions.

French Expressions offers tailor-made luxury holidays to regions throughout France, from those closer to the Channel ports such as Normandy and Brittany, to the regions at the heart of France including the Loire Valley and Burgundy, to those furthest south such as the Basque country bordering the Pyrenees or Provence, a favourite destination for clients who often tour the vineyards, the historical, Roman towns or visit the lavender beds.

Each of the regions we feature contains a personal selection of luxury hotels. Holidays are created for stays at each hotel, of any number of nights and usually include a flight and a hire-car, depending on the location of the hotel. However, travel arrangements can be varied to include the popular option of self-drive from the UK, rail travel from the UK using Eurostar and then TGV for the French regions, and hotels and regions can be combined to give a multi-centre or a touring holiday. The touring holiday through France, whether by own car, fly-drive or rail and then hire-car is one of our most popular holiday concepts. We will construct a holiday according to your requirements, based on our knowledge and experience.

France as a country lends itself to special interest holidays, with a focus, among other things, on golf, spa, food and wine, and culture (visiting historic chateaux and their gardens, visiting art exhibitions and cultural events). We can offer you cookery in the Bordeaux region, holidays that suggest visits to the vineyards and gardens of France, golf holidays in Provence and many others besides.

FRANCE - FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
We know France well — Provence, the Dordogne, the Loire. Where do you take clients who feel they've covered the obvious ground?
This is exactly the kind of brief we relish. France rewards those who look sideways, and our programme is specifically built around the regions that most operators either ignore or treat as afterthoughts. The Auvergne, for instance — volcanic, dramatic, sparsely visited, with some genuinely exceptional food — is a world away from the well-trodden south. The French Basque Country around St Jean de Luz offers a culture, cuisine and landscape that feel entirely distinct from the rest of France, with the Pyrenees as a backdrop and some of the most serious eating on the Atlantic coast. Languedoc-Roussillon, French Catalonia, the Tarn and Lot, the Île de Ré — these aren't compromises for those who can't face Provence again. For many of our clients, they become the most memorable France they've experienced. Tell us what you've already done, and we'll build from there.

We're drawn to the idea of touring France rather than a single base. How do you approach that, and what makes it work well?
The touring holiday is one of our most popular and most satisfying formats, and France is arguably the finest touring country in Europe — the road network, the diversity of landscape within relatively short distances, and the quality of hotel accommodation in almost every region make it exceptionally well-suited. We put together itineraries that combine regions with genuine contrast — a grand chateau-hotel in the Loire followed by something more ruggedly authentic in the Dordogne, or a sweep through Champagne, Alsace and Burgundy for those drawn to the great wine landscapes of eastern France. The key is getting the pace and the routing right — neither too rushed nor too static — and ensuring the hotels are genuinely worth stopping for, not merely convenient. We've been doing this for thirty years and the knowledge is specific: we know which combinations work, which roads to take and avoid, and where to eat between destinations.

Travel arrangements to France feel complicated — should we fly, take the train, or drive? How do you decide?
It genuinely depends, and we're glad you've asked rather than assuming there's a single right answer. For the south — Provence, the Côte d'Azur, Corsica — flying is usually the most practical choice, though the train to Nice or Avignon is a serious and civilised alternative that we arrange frequently. For Normandy, Brittany, the Loire and the north, the self-drive option — taking your own car by Eurostar or ferry — gives you a freedom and flexibility that flying into a hire car simply doesn't replicate. For those who want to combine cities — Paris, Strasbourg, Lyon, Bordeaux — an all-rail itinerary using Eurostar and the TGV network is not only perfectly comfortable but often genuinely preferable to flying. We've structured all three options across our programme and we're happy to talk through what suits the specific regions and hotels you're considering. The method of travel shapes the holiday more than people often realise.

Food and wine matter enormously to us. Which parts of France do you feature that genuinely deliver at the highest level?
France remains unrivalled in this regard, but the best experiences are rarely the most obvious ones, and this is where we add real value. Our programme covers the great wine regions — Burgundy, Champagne, the Bordeaux vineyards, the Rhône Valley, Alsace — with hotels that sit within or immediately adjacent to them, so the exploration is organic rather than staged. We offer a cookery holiday near Bordeaux based at Le Saint James, a Relais & Châteaux property with its own cookery school and vineyards, as well as a cookery and wine experience at the Château de Berne in Provence. The vinotherapy spa at Les Sources de Caudalie, set among the Smith-Haut-Lafitte vines outside Bordeaux, is in a category of its own for those who want food, wine and restoration combined. For gastronomy more broadly, the Auvergne — home to Bras Le Suquet, one of the most celebrated restaurants in France — is a revelation. We know which restaurants justify a detour and which hotels have kitchens that genuinely match their surroundings.

We're interested in French history and culture, but at a level beyond the standard chateau visits. Can you offer something more substantive?
Absolutely, and this is where the depth of our regional programme becomes particularly useful. Normandy alone rewards serious attention — not just the landing beaches and the extraordinary Bayeux Tapestry, but the great abbey churches of Caen, the artistic legacy of the Impressionists around Honfleur, the medieval architecture of the interior. The Languedoc holds one of the most dramatic concentrations of Cathar history in Europe, the Roman monuments of Nîmes and the Pont du Gard, and Carcassonne — which, seen from the right hotel within the city walls, is entirely different from the day-tripper experience. Alsace offers a distinct Franco-German cultural identity unlike anywhere else in France, best understood slowly, at the pace of its wine road villages and the extraordinary concentration of half-timbered architecture around Colmar and Strasbourg. We can arrange private guided visits, specialist itineraries around particular periods or themes, and access to places that reward a knowledgeable audience. France's cultural riches are enormous — the question is which layer you want to explore, and we'll help you find it.