France Voila travel and French tourism, lodging rentals and accommodation services

1. Apartments in Spain - Italy - and the rest of the world
2. Paris - Hotels - Travel and Tours
3. Soulandre - discover another France
4. Bringing Pets to France
5. Insurance
6. Wine - The Oregon Trail to Languedoc
7. Nizas - Carnivals and candidates

The last three newsletters have been much later than usual, honestly, I am not spending all my time sitting in the sun sipping wine, the problem is that there are simply not enough hours in the day. Living in the south of France has many advantages, but finding people to help me with the Internet sites and the bookings is not one of them. Recently I asked in this newsletter for help setting up office in the USA and the UK, many of you wrote in and I apologise for not yet having replied to everyone. I will, I promise and I can see some exciting opportunities for our new initiatives.

We are also very late in taking subscriptions for our new journal - French Property Digest - I thought it would be best to set up a credit card facility in the UK - big mistake. Last week the bank (NatWest which has the monopoly of dealing with multiple currencies in Europe) said they could not offer services as I live in France and we do not bank with them, they kept the $1000 fee for this decision having wasted our time and delayed things for 5 months. I thought Yahoo were bad enough, the NatWest bank now gets my vote for the worst customer service in the world.

I have put a new service on our sites where you can select and book self catering accommodation in Spain plus many other countries (including one home in Australia). You can now see this on our WotSpot.com site at...

The biggest section is for vacation properties in Spain. You can also access all our rental properties in France from the WotSpot site, plus apartments in Rome and Venice and our popular tour site at 1stVacations.com

Recently I have been spending a lot of time in Paris, it always surprises me how small the city is. The best way to travel is to walk and the metro is quick, clean, safe and cheap. I will (do my best to) put some more pages on next week with details of the carte orange and other offers for travel in Paris.

Less than 2 hours from Paris, but you are in a different world. This area of woodland and lakes offers some of the best hunting (duck, deer and wild boar) and fishing in Europe. Within one hour there are over 100 historic chateaux and castles of the Loire and the Cher valleys. For hundreds of years the landowners have tried to make this poor farmland profitable. Farming is still difficult, but the thousands of lakes and ponds, created over the centuries to drain the land, now offer spectacular fishing and shooting.

We can offer a very special property which comes with over 400 acres of hunting and fishing in the heart of this region, you don't have to bring your guns and rods with you, there is a three star restaurant just down the road.

Based in the North of France, Cani - Excel is owned and managed by Ren e Hemming a qualified vet nurse (registered with the Royal college of veterinary surgeons, London) with over 16 years professional pet care experience, including work as an RSPCA and UK Quarantine Kennel Manager.

Cani - Excel offers a way to avoid UK quarantine by taking advantage of the Pet Travel Scheme and qualifying your pet as a European resident, this avoids the need for kenneling. They can arrange everything including the important Pet Travel Scheme documentation.

Do make sure you are covered for missed flights, lost booking deposits due to cancellation and all the usual luggage and medical cover. Credit cards are getting more selective as to what they cover and a strike by porters or air traffic control is now being called "an act of God" and you may not have cover from the airline or your credit card.

In the case of a bankrupt airline, some credit card companies will tell consumers that they are not liable to act as an insurance company for the carrier. The Federal Trade Commission, which enforces the Fair Credit Billing Act, says the provisions apply even in the case of a bankrupt airline.

Living here in the middle of the biggest wine making area in the world (Languedoc-Mediterranee), we take a lot of things for granted. I like to remind people who go on (and on) about wine that most of the vines in France come from American stock after many of the local varieties were wiped out at the end of the 19th century.

We recently had a visitor to Nizas, Bob Mayfield from Vancouver WA, who writes about wine and who has a superb printed newsletter. This newsletter is different, I don't now how to describe it but words like irreverent, off-the-wall and fantastic leap to mind. I am going to ask Bob if I can offer subscriptions on-line, but for now you can read a small piece he wrote for us about his visit to Minerve, at...

Unlike many other parts of France, the old guard got back into the Town Hall in Nizas this month. Slightly to the right of Atilla the Hun, we will not be expecting many changes over the next six years. However the opposing team only missed getting elected by 4%, in a small village like Nizas this is only 20 votes, so perhaps this will keep the new mayor in his toes or the guillotines will be out in the town square.

The run up to the elections put a damper on the usual end of winter carnival. This is a pagan ritual where the village processes through the streets with the 50 ft long totem of Nizas, which is a fish called a loche, (loach) . At the end a mock trial is held for the stuffed figure or Mr (or Mme) carnival who is accused of all the ills and problems of the previous year. Invariably found guilty, the effigy is then burnt and all the village holds hands and circles the burning straw figure chanting a medieval dirge. - this is real creepy stuff.

This year was a little lighter. The kids from the village school were dressed as bears, Chinese, lumberjacks or Mexicans (please don't ask me why) and all did dances around the village to these themes. Then the Chinese dragon was accused of all the problems of the previous year and burnt outside the Town Hall - a sort of politically safe gesture.

The lack of change will give me more time to work on the Nizas project which is my idea to record the life of this perfect small French Mediterranean village as it evolves from a traditional agricultural community to - something else. No one knows what the next few years will bring, tourism is planned to increase, but if the French government cannot control simple things like the strikes which regularly cripple transport, then their huge income from tourism will be affected. There are plans to alter this region, even to change the name from Languedoc-Roussillon to Languedoc-Mediterranee, I suppose to let people know where it is. Our village is growing, the village school has more than doubled in size since we moved her 7 years ago. These new Nizascoise mostly commute to Montpellier and work in service industries. Many of the local vineyards are being bought up by American and Swiss consortiums.

The Easter holidays are just starting and our neighbours from the northern buffer state will be back, in the next issue I confidently expect to be able to report on the peregrinations of the Nizas barrel.

I really try to answer all the mail I receive, I get over 600 mails a day, half is junk and I sort the rest into soon, now, urgent, immediately and aargh!!!. However I know there are some I miss and I feel bad when I find them in an old file months later. The same goes for rental inquiries, we try hard to find other accommodation if the requested accommodation is booked. I had an unfortunate experience last month when I sent a large number of rental inquiries to an agency and they told me three weeks later they couldn't help. This means that those inquiries had not had a reply from me for up to a month.

If you are thinking of coming to France for a visit - or longer - there is a lot of useful help, contacts and advice from experts and specialists (as well as me) about property, travel and a lot more.