Looking for 1-2 week intermediate French language program for 40-something vegetarian

Check out the Alliance Française schools and filter for homestays! You're likely to get a mixture of age ranges, goals, and national origins in these classes. It's possible / likely that some locations have host families accustomed to hosting vegetarians, or who may be vegetarians themselves. Host families can typically decide if it's something they want to deal with or not.

I know nothing about home stays, but there are a lot of French-language schools in Nice. The tourist office printed out a list for me. I have no idea whether that list is available online. When I've looked for such information in the past, I've found it fairly sketchy except for the larger schools. But it's probably the larger schools that will have home-stay options.

I'm mentioning this primarily because, from the weather standpoint, Nice should be a reasonably good choice for a fall/winter trip. And there are lots of sightseeing options for your half-days off. I would highly recommend morning rather than afternoon classes, though. If you need to be in a classroom at something like 1 PM or 1:30 PM and most sightseeing attractions don't open until 10 AM, it's not so easy to make productive use of your time off.

Another thing: high season on the Riviera is in the summer. Lots of attractions cut back their hours and even days of operation outside peak season. Spend some time hitting the sights' websites ahead of time to see what you can squeeze in. Some smaller sights may be open only 3 or 4 days a week.

Following up now that I have a minute, it looks like you can do short-term classes and short-term host family stays at Alliance Française locations, as long as it's at least two weeks. At least two weeks is recommendable in any case if you are hoping to make progress.

I'd echo acraven's comment about concerns surrounding school quality. That's why I tend to emphasize the AF - it's much easier to feel confident in what you're signing up for. I was also curious about Barbra's suggested website which was new to me, and found that in several cases the top language schools in a city weren't listed. It looks like it may be listings of smaller and/or newer schools, or perhaps schools willing to give a cut of their bookings to the clearinghouse site. Sometimes that can be a good thing (more individual attention); other times it might be a less professional organization. It's always good to look at reviews on other sites to get a larger picture of the school and student experiences.

I hope you find a great program - learning languages is such a valuable pursuit!

I bet you're right; there's probably some sort of commission or fee involved somewhere. Chances are the best language schools don't need as much help getting students, so they're less likely to sign on.

Just note that some of the language programs do cater to college and gap year audiences. You may want to avoid those. My spouse has taken multiple several week courses at the International House in Nice, with a crowd that varies from late 20s to retired. There is also an Alliance Francaise, and a number of other schools. There is also a well-regarded program in Villefranche-sur-Mer, that is priced at the higher end called l'Institute de Francais. Several people in our local AF branch go to a program in Tours, called CLE.