Making Plans for Our Pre-Cruise Stay in France

In 79 days, Tim and I will be in Avignon, France, ready to board our ship for our France’s Finest river cruise. Our flights have been booked, and rebooked, but the details of our pre-trip stay in Nice are still a bit up in the air.

We will be arriving in Nice on May 3 at 5:05 pm, too late in the day to do much of anything. We will have three full days to explore the Riviera and Provence, and then we will make our way to Avignon on May 7. I have a tentative hotel booked, but I’m not too excited about it.

My plan was to base ourselves in Nice for four nights and make day trips to places of interest. We would either travel independently by train or take small-group tours. I’ve investigated various options, but I’ve not booked anything yet. I’m not sure what’s been holding me back.

Yesterday, I was thinking about the trip, knowing I had to quit stalling, and recalled something my friend Noreen talked about while we were in Maine last summer. She had mentioned the success she had had with using Wendy Perrin’s WOW List and had raved about the trips the travel specialists had put together for her.

That conversation got me thinking. I was familiar with the WOW List, but had not considered it as a possibility, thinking the resulting trip would be too expensive. But, I decided to take a look at the options. The specialist for France that I identified noted that the minimum cost would be $1,500 per day, including hotel accommodations and driver-guide. That was certainly more than I thought we would be spending.

Then I thought some more. If we could splurge on business class seats to France, surely we could spend the same amount of money for a personalized itinerary with our own driver-guide. This would also make our lives so much easier.

So, I filled out the questionnaire, gave a general idea of what we might like to do, stated our budget, and waited for a response. I received an email from Wendy Perrin almost immediately, telling me that we were “in.” This morning I received an email from the travel specialist, who said he would be delighted to plan a trip for us. We scheduled a Zoom call for next Tuesday to go over the different possibilities and options. Because of the time difference, our call will be at 7:30 am. It was that or 2:00 am!

I now feel much better about this portion of our trip and feel more confident that this will be a wonderful start to our time in France.

The WOW List - We're On Our Way!