Le Voyage extends organically from what we have been exploring together around the table.
It is an opportunity to encounter a place with a deeper understanding of its history, culture, language, food, art, contradictions, and ordinary life.
For now, that means our home in Provence — where curiosity leads next, we haven't decided yet. Where we go will change. The way we go will not.
We travel in small groups, slowly enough to see what is really there — what is often overlooked in the hurried rush of ordinary tourism. We meet people, eat together, walk, talk, visit, learn, and leave room for the unexpected.
And the conversation continues at tables along the way. Over lunch, across a bottle of wine, at the end of a long day, we come back together to talk about what we have encountered — the smells and tastes, the people we have met, the things that surprised us, challenged us, delighted us, or left us wondering.
We bring with us all that we explored before this phase of the journey. It is no longer abstract. Here, we are living it.
Currently unavailable for house stays while our home undergoes renovations.
Reach out if you'd like to hear when house stays resume.
For those who wish, the table extends: the conversations continue in the places, meals, landscapes, and relationships already begun together. François-Xavier was born in Nîmes. Our home in the South of France is in Orsan, a small village in the Gard and the place from which the week unfolds. We host Partage in a region that is part of our own life.
Partage Provence is a week with three couples — an evening table each night, bread and wine, and conversation that wanders into literature, philosophy, history, whatever the day turned up.
The days are intentionally unhurried, leaving room to pay attention to the countryside, the food, the history, the people we meet, and the ordinary rhythms of the region.
We travel through the region together, talking as we go and returning to the questions, references, and observations that have developed around the table.
Understanding accumulates through experience: a place becomes more legible because of what you have already read, discussed, tasted, noticed, and asked.
Over the course of the week, the region becomes more familiar: places become recognizable, conversations carry forward, and what began as an idea becomes personal experience.
Our home near Orsan, just outside Nîmes in the Gard, is the base — three couples, that is the limit, and how many our home can comfortably accommodate.
Mornings are slow, with breakfast fresh every morning from the village baker. Afternoons have direction — a Roman aqueduct, a medieval market town, a vineyard visit made possible by a phone call from someone trusted, an abbey where monks still grow lavender. One day is given to Nîmes, the city where François-Xavier was born. One day we walk to Saint-Rémy, where Van Gogh painted.
Participation is offered but never required. While we hope you will join us for everything, there is no obligation — if a nap and a book sound better on a given afternoon, that is exactly what the week is for.
And then, in the evening, we return to the table.
Many of the moments of the week are made possible through personal relationships developed over years — introductions to winemakers, access to private estates, invitations that cannot be purchased. This is what it means to be a guest.
Dates, details, and pricing for our current Partage Provence gathering are all here. View details & pricing →
The following are offered as starting points, optional and loose. Every Partage group finds its own pace and its own references. These are the ones we return to.
The vineyards below are a few that are well known to François-Xavier — potential visits will be made as guests, not as usual tourists. Access to places such as these, in this way, is not available through traditional booking services, but by invitation.
You have always been drawn to a particular place or culture — the food, the wine, the films, the way of life. You have visited. You want to go deeper.
You and your partner are looking for a shared experience that is meaningful — something that changes how you see.
You are curious about what sits behind the places you visit. You may prefer a conversation with a winemaker to a conventional tasting, or a village market to the place recommended by every guide.
You are planning an extended stay, a relocation, or significant time somewhere new, and want more cultural context before you arrive.
Three nights in the city, framed by everything we have already shared together. By the time you reach Paris, you are arriving as someone who has spent weeks inside French culture, who has broken bread in Provence, who knows what to look for and how to be present to it — not as a tourist.
François-Xavier taught at the Sorbonne. He knows the intimate bookshops, the unremarkable-looking cafés that have been serving the same conversations for fifty years, the restaurants in old Paris that the guides tend to overlook. The Louvre and Eiffel Tower are yours to explore as you wish, and they are worth it — but our three days together are something else: an unhurried three days through the narrow passages and quiet courtyards of a Paris that most visitors never find, in the company of someone who lived and worked inside it.
Because Paris is arranged in advance — reservations held, accommodations secured, restaurants booked — it is a choice made at the time of booking. The extension includes three nights of accommodation, all meals during the three days, and travel from Provence to Paris by TGV. Couples continuing to Paris travel with François-Xavier and Heather directly from Provence.
Everything we choose for these days is chosen with intention — the places not likely to be experienced by the average visitor on holiday, and that cannot be found without knowing where to look.
Every participant receives a preparation packet ahead of the trip — seasonal packing guidance, regional context, a suggested reading and viewing list put together for your group, and practical details about travel, rhythm, and what to expect. Nothing you need to do. Just what you might want to have in hand.