Month-long home base

We’ve been doing 3-4 week long house exchanges in Europe for years. Some towns/cities in France we’ve exchanged in or considered are Aix en Provence, Albi, Ambois, Strasbourg, Bordeaux and St Malo. Have fun narrowing down your options.

Thank you so much Mona! Can I ask who you worked with on your house exchange? Also, I'd love to hear how Aix and Bordeaux compare to each other.

We use a long-standing home exchange company https://homelink.org/en/. They have been in existence for > 60 years!

I can’t compare the two cities you mention though because while we did exchange in Aix a few years ago, we only had a nice offer from Bordeaux and didn’t take it when an offer from Switzerland came along last year.

There are a lot more possibilities for exchanging in France than Switzerland with our agency.

Do you plan to rent a car either for the entire time or each weekend? You mentioned trains, and that will make quite a difference in the day-trips you'll have available to you.

I'd suggest opening Google Maps and ViaMichelin.com and focusing on each possibility, one at a time. Look on Google Maps for possible day-trip destinations near your proposed base. Check driving time on ViaMichelin. If you plan to use trains instead, check travel time on either the Deutsche Bahn or the SNCF website.

Bordeaux is a large, handsome city with much grand architecture. Business-like (I've heard people call it "snobby" or "stuffy", though people were perfectly nice to me). A lot of wide streets. Obviously wine-oriented. Not generally an intimate-feeling place, and I wouldn't call it "charming" overall, though there's a neighborhood or two with a medieval street layout. You can day-trip to St-Emilion, but I think you'd be a bit too far from the Dordogne. I suspect it may not be quite what you're looking for. I think a week would be long enough there (too long for many people).

Aix-en-Provence is much smaller. I only day-tripped to it. I liked it, but that's not a good basis for evaluating its suitability as a month-long base. I'm not sure it's the most convenient place in Provence for what you plan to do; it's a bit farther east than a lot of the little places people talk about visiting. If you're planning to use the train (or buses) for your day-trips, be aware that even with a more northerly base, there will be some small places in Provence you cannot reach unless you rent a car or take a tour.

I know quite lot of people are lukewarm to Avignon. I confess to wondering how many of them actually spent more than a few hours in the city, because I thoroughly enjoyed it. There's a good-sized historic area. You just need to venture off the direct route between the train station and the Palais des Papes. But I am rather easily pleased if you plunk me down in a town with a pretty historic district and a bunch of streets where I'll be about the only foreign tourist afoot. Avignon is a convenient public-transportation hub. I stayed there for about a week, making side-trips to Arles, Villeneuve-lez-Avignon, l'Isle sur la Sorgue and St-Remy.

Antibes seemed suitably "charming" on my day-trip there during a longer stay in Nice. Trains run up and down the coast, making it easy to visit a lot of places. You could hop on a train to have dinner in a neighboring town. To get up to the hill towns without a car, you'd often (maybe always) have to take first a train, then a bus.

The stretch of the coast and adjoining territory down close to the Spanish border is also interesting. There might be enough going on in Narbonne to work for a one-month stay. I'm not sure about that, or about how far you could reasonably travel on day-trips, because I stayed in Perpignan (scruffier), partly due to its workability as a jumping-off point for a trip on the Yellow Train through the Pyrenees.

Isn't Giverny quite small? It doesn't have its own train station.

Thanks so much acraven! I noticed you are from DC. My daughter just moved to the West End area and I LOVE IT! I'm ready to leave California and move to the mid-Atlantic. What a great city! Beautiful architecture. Historic. World-class museums, monuments, restaurants -- I haven't been since I was a kid and I fell in love! I want a "Bethesda" or "Alexandria" -- charming, yet buzzing in their own right and easy proximity to the District. Maybe I should look outside Paris...

Anyway.... We don't want a car although we may need to rent one for weekends if we go to a small town. A train station is a must. I will look at Avignon. Neighbors down the street enjoyed St. Remy for 3 weeks. My daughter who lives in DC just spent 6 weeks in Nice after college graduation and liked it a lot. Said Old Town was cute, and yes, easy to go up and down the coast. She preferred Antibes over Menton.

She also lived in St. Germain des Pres Paris for 4 months and is pushing that! :) We are open to a quaint part of a big city; we just want to avoid the crowds we found in Europe over 4th of July. It was crazy!

Montpellier immediately came to my m8nd as I read your post. It is served by a good airport as well as the TGV. It is a college town, so not sleepy, and would have all the technology you need for your work. It has a nice center without a lot of tourists. Best of all, it is well situated for day trips into Provence and Languedoc, and it is close to the Mediterranean for beach time. I don't think you could go wrong spending a month there.

You know, I almost mentioned Montpellier, which I liked on a 2- or 3-night visit a few years ago. It's a big-time college town, and I wasn't sure that's what CaliMom was looking for. Expansive historic district.

St.-Remy seemed pleasant (another day-trip destination for me) but does not, in fact, have a train station. It's served by buses from Arles and Avignon so easy to visit from either, but I'd consider it not ideal as a month-long base for someone who wants to use trains.

If you're OK with a large city, you might consider Lyon. But driving out of town if you decided to use a car occasionally might be not so much fun.

Thanks All! I thought about Montpellier but have read so much about it being on the “rebound” that I wasn’t sure. I like the idea of a college town. Somebody suggested Cambridge because the university has so many events to take advantage of.

Lisa, I will look into Amiens! I really like the idea being an hour from Paris. And I’d love to see Brussels — haven’t been there since the 80s. Is Lillie nice? They have my favorite restaurant group: Big Mama from Paris :)

Have you considered Lyon?

I think it fits your description pretty well. It a good looking walkable city with good public transportation, it has sights but isn't really touristy and it's France's gastronomic capital so lots or restaurants to try. It is well connected by train - two hours by train to both Paris and Geneva so potential for a day trip and easy for a weekend visit as well as an hour from Provence. It also has a pretty well connected airport if you want to go further.

It's bigger than the towns others are suggesting but the older section by the rivers and the hill that visitors care about is actually pretty small. As charming as a small town seems for a whole month and worrying about technology a bigger city might be a better choice in the long run.

Sounds awesome - have a good time,
=Tod

How about Sarlat in the Dordogne region? I was only there for 3 days but loved the whole area. You'd definitely want a car for weekends though. So much history in the area with castles dating from the 100 years war, and all the pre-historic caves with their cave paintings. It's on our bucket list for a longer stay.

We've traveled to France, Italy, Ireland and England mostly for one month periods with some two week stays. We spent two weeks in Isle sur la Sorgue in Provence and two one month stays near Cenac et St Julien in Dordogne. The house we rent in Cenac is in the countryside. We also spent a month one trip and two weeks a second time in the Cotswolds, near Burford. Both of those stays were in the country which is our preferred stay.

One of our preferences is an area with good street markets. Both locations in France provide this with the best in Dordogne.

We've been to Bordeaux a couple of times on day trips and it didn't suit us. Aix was too large for us.

Thanks so much everyone! I don’t know Dordogne at all; although I haven’t been to Provence since 2005 and have never been to Lillie or Amiens.

We really don’t want a car so while the smaller villages sound charming, we will want to explore on the weekends. We will probably end up renting a car.

Yes markets are important. We will want to grocery shop, cook, sit in cafes and people watch, try local wine... is Avignon midway in size between Aix and St Remy? Full of charm and character? Village-like at all? I read you can walk across the river to a cute town.

Populations are (roughly):

Aix 140,000
Avignon 90,000
St-Remy under 10,000

The historic center of Avignon is sizable; I wouldn't say it feels like a village.

I was going to suggest Bayeux but if you're from LA you might not find a high of 70 degrees to be warm.

I enjoyed La Rochelle - great food markets, one of the sunniest places in France that’s not on the southern coast, a world class aquarium, plenty of art galleries and museums. From there, you could visit the charming and chi chi Ile de Re, the island of Oleron just further south (very different in character) and other parts of this fantastic coastline.

Bordeaux is ok for a few days, but I wouldn’t want a week there. Some parts are a bit rough. Giverny is a day trip and is dead once the day trippers depart. I haven’t been to Antibes - it doesn’t sound like my kind of place.

We stayed in Arles and I found it met all of your criteria. Great food, art, tourist sights, easy train access, very walkable.

We also stayed in Avignon on the Street of Dyers and found that to be a very interesting area. I did like Arles better, though.

I would nominate Rennes in Brittany. Not sure if it is as warm as you want (see https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Temperature-Sunshine,rennes,France ) but it is a university town on the TGV line and lets you explore Brittany and Normandy in your free time (allthough you'll need a car for the smaller towns). The region was a favorite of the Impressionists if you like that art. Rennes has a delightful park named Thabor, pedestrian-only downtown streets, the 2nd biggest outdoor market in France on Saturdays, a medieval core, museums, and of course plenty of good restaurants as well as inexpensive eats since it is a college area. See also https://www.thelocal.fr/20180226/is-rennes-really-the-best-place-to-live-in-france

Rennes is a good base for seeing some very attractive Breton towns by public transportation (including Fougeres, Vitre, Dinan; also the city of Vannes), but 'tis true that this is not an area I'd describe as having "warmer weather" in September. It tends to be overcast if not actually rainy even in mid-summer. But I haven't researched the situation in September; perhaps it's lovely at that time of year. The area otherwise has a lot to recommend it. Food obviously. I assume wine, too (though I think not locally produced), but I am not a wine drinker.

I'm not sure there's a great deal of art in that area, aside from the Rennes Museum of Fine Arts. When I think of small towns with art museums I think primarily of the coastal towns that attracted artists over the years and ended up with nice collections as a result. Perhaps there are art museums in St.-Malo, Dinard or Vannes. If you get serious about this area, post again and I'll go through the notes I compiled for this year's trip to Brittany. I usually make note of any art museums I read about and try to visit them.