France + All Things French
After a wonderful few years of offering our gorgeous French gift boxes to customers across the globe, we are no longer creating or selling our My Beautiful French Collection Boxes.
We know you loved them and after sell out editions for years, we've moved our focus on to other projects. Thank you for your support and I'm delighted that our boxes were able to bring joy to so many, especially during the couple of years Covid ruled our life.
In true French style, the famous Crêpe Suzette dessert with the delicious orange sauce is surrounded by legends and mystic as to how it was created and how it acquired its now famous name.
Legend goes that in 1896 the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII) was dining with a young lady named Suzette at Café de Paris in sunny Monte Carlo and he ordered hot pancakes. As fortune would have it the young pastry chef Henri Charpentier, who was in charge of preparing the dessert, accidentally spilt alcohol on his crêpe.
It's ready... your 2025 Beautiful French Villages Calendar.
Downloadable, printable AND absolutely Beautiful with a capital 'B' !!
... and also free to all subscribers.
This is the third year I've created digital printable calendars - we've oohed and aahed over the dreamy 2023 Paris Calendar and bold awesome 2024 France Calendar... now for you, we have 12 stunning villages from across France that even have official status of being a 'most beautiful village of France.'
It's my way of saying 'thanks' to you for your support and company over 2024. Whether you are new to the blog or you've been around from the beginning, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. A HUGE thanks for reading our posts, commenting, sharing with your friends, and for emailing me with all your kind messages of gratitude, post requests and travel related questions.
I love sharing it all with you. Travel tips and recommendations, travel guides, authentic everyday experiences of living in a tiny French village, recipes to enjoy and great books to read - it's all about bringing France to You.
Our 2025 Beautiful French Villages Calendar will be emailed to your inbox directly as a printable pdf that you can take to your local printer or print at home. Have it spiral-bound, display on a clipboard or pop each month on the fridge with a magnet - the choice is yours!
Enjoy and thanks again...
Love
France is called "the land of the châteaux", and with over 45,000 châteaux scattered across the breath and width of the country it literally is a land filled with stunning châteaux!
In this beautiful post we discover some stunning French châteaux and there's gorgeous photos, a little history and fun info on each. Use this post to plan your itinerary for your next trip to France, or to simply enjoy some armchair travelling.
Some regions are well known for their immense and stunning châteaux and are popular with visitors, but castles and châteaux are literally dotted all across France. The Loire Valley has some of the most visited châteaux, but the Dordogne and Languedoc also have their fair share of stunning castles and châteaux. Read on for more information about France's stunning castles and be inspired by our stunning French château photos.
Life in Brittany includes our fair share of delicious cakes and especially the cakes traditional to the region which are collectively called 'Breton cakes', even though this broadly includes biscuits, lollipops and caramels.
Breton cakes are famous for their layers of pastry and creamy butter which is proudly produced locally. The most well known of the 'Breton Cakes' is the Gâteau Breton (Breton Cake), Far Breton and the Kouign-Amann. Surprisingly, the popularity of these desserts with inhabitants of Brittany doesn't correspond with how well known in general.
Sweets that have originated in the region include Salted Caramels, Niniches (artisanal lollipops from Quiberon), and Gavotte (a lacy golden mini crêpe). Breton butter cookies (Sablés Breton) are also a very popular dessert in Brittany. You'll find them in prettily packaged in tins in just about all supermarkets, souvenir stores, markets and in many boutique boulangeries.
Place Masséna, Nice
While the rest of France is cold and some regions are still covered in snow, festival fever breaks out on the French Riviera. There are three major festivals that warm up the winter days in the South of France in Nice, Menton and Mandelieu-la-Napoule.
Here's what you need to know about each of them so you can plan your next winter trip to the French Riviera to enjoy these hugely popular and artistic festivals.
If there's one dessert or sweet that makes me feel most at home in Brittany it's the little French salted butter cookies, the Sablé Breton. They are always included in our first grocery shop that we do when making our way to our village home in Côtes d'Armor after arriving in France from Australia.
With their delicate thin serrated shape and hint of salt, the Sablé Breton makes me think of the wild, but beautiful sea that borders the coastline of Brittany. This is because the biscuits are made with sea salt from our region, the famous Fleur de Sel salt.
French Fleur de Sel is collected off the coast of Brittany and sold around the world for its prized subtle flavour. The largest production and collection of the salt is from the towns of Guérande (called Fleur de Sel de Guérande), Noirmoutier, and Île de Ré.
Quintin is a charming French town southwest of Saint-Brieuc city, and is only a short drive from our village. The smallish town has lots to offer to visitors with its blend of old-world charm and modern attractions. Quintin is built in the heart of the scenic “Le Gouët” river valley and is set on a hill perpetually overlooking the serene waters of Étang de Quintin (Quintin Lake).
Situated between Armor and Argoat, Quintin, which was a fortified town and the centre of the Marian cult, boasts thirteen classified historic monuments. That's a lot of historical monuments for one small town!
It's architecturally rich urban heritage, which is principally the legacy of two centuries of prosperity arising from the manufacture of linen, is what makes it so attractive.