One Year In France

We recently spent an entire year living in France, staying in 12 different cities and visiting 6 more via day trip. These stops were spread throughout the country, as we tried to soak in the flavor of the many distinct areas. In every region we found a plethora of amazing art and we did our best to see as much of it as possible. In total we went to 27 art museums. We also visited at least that many cathedrals, themselves filled with incredible art and architecture. We ate large quantities of the delicious bread and cheese that’s available everywhere. This long stay allowed us to learn a lot about the country, attitudes, and their way of life. And we even picked up a little French. 

One Year Tourist Visa 

In July of 2024 we applied for a year-long tourist visa categorized as the VLS-T (visa long séjour temporaire). This is a simplified version of France’s resident visa, the VLS-TS. After proving that we had sufficient funds, proper insurance, and a willingness to carefully fill out paperwork, we were granted the ability to stay for an entire year. When we received our passports back with the visa inside, it included a sticker that informed us that we didn’t need to register with the authorities nor obtain a tax ID number. That made things very easy. We just showed up and did our thing. We did have to pay $350 in fees to obtain the visa, but it was well worth the money.

Train Travel

A huge benefit of being able to stay in France for a year is that we were able to go the entire time without stepping foot in an airport. France has a great train system, and we took advantage of it. We made one move between cities (Rennes to Rouen) and one day trip (Annecy) by bus, but otherwise, all of our transportation was via train. 

We started in the southeast in late September 2024, with the idea that we’d stay in southern France through the winter since the weather is milder in the south. But we ended up finding a great deal on an Airbnb in Paris over Christmas and New Years that we couldn’t pass up. So we hopped on an express train that whisked us from Nîmes in the far south to the capital in a little over 3 hours. That same trip takes over 7 hours by car, and twice as long as that by bus. It’s pretty incredible how efficient this method of travel can be.

Trip Planning

Trying to plan where to go was somewhat difficult because there were so many good options. We knew we wanted to see a lot of different regions, but deciding where to base ourselves was a challenge. At the time of booking, it seemed like a really important decision. Now with hindsight, I don’t think it mattered much because I don’t think there were any bad choices. We enjoyed everywhere that we stayed and visited.

Even with a whole year we didn’t make it to popular southern cities like Nice, Montpelier or Marseilles. We also missed out on charming German border cities Strasburg and Colmar. We skipped most of the center of the country too, where Orleans, Tours, Angers, and Le Mans all look quite pleasant as well. France has a wealth of really nice cities.

In the end, we picked 12 cities to live in and day-tripped to 6 more. We stayed in 9 cities for 4 weeks and 3 for longer. Toulouse and Rouen received slightly longer stays of 32 and 35 nights respectively. Our only repeat destination was Paris, where we stayed for 30 nights in the winter, made a day trip in June, and returned again for 14 more nights to round out the end of our time in France. 

Since our first visit to Paris was over the new year, we missed out on the plentiful parks as they were hibernating for the winter. We spent our time inside all of the art museums instead. We returned in September 2025 with a focus on enjoying the many outdoor spaces of the capital. Unfortunately, half of that two week stay was spent sick as we both came down with some crud. That made it a less than great send off, but I’m quite thankful that we were able to spend a lot of healthy time prior to this. We did manage to squeeze in a trip to Versailles to see the palace, which we’d never been to before.

Denied In Marseille

Marseille is the one place that we really wanted to stay but we weren’t able to make it happen. It looks like a city that would check a lot of our boxes. It’s filled with lots of great graffiti and street art while being close to a large national park. Marseille is considered vibrant and less reserved due to a large influx of African immigrants. The main complaints about Marseille are that it’s more dangerous than other cities and that it apparently doesn’t feel very French. But I figured it’d be a nice contrast to all of the other real French places we’d be staying throughout our year.

We attempted to book apartments 3 separate times, but each of them fell through. The first host didn’t want a longer term guest over the Christmas holidays. The second host said the calendar wasn’t updated properly and it wasn’t available. And I don’t remember the exact reason for the third, but they couldn’t accept our reservation either. We have lived out of Airbnbs for over 6 years now and this kind of thing almost never happens. To have it happen 3 times in a row was mind boggling. After that we gave up, as apparently we were not meant to go to Marseille. Luckily for us, there were plenty of other great cities to visit.

Day Trips

We made 7 day trips during our stay. First we went to Annecy to check out the breathtaking mountain lake. There were two temporary art exhibitions in Paris that we really wanted to see, so we hopped over there in June. We also traveled to Albi, Metz, and Avignon to see museums, and came away impressed by these cities as well. Our last two were very touristy stops. A trek to Mont Saint Michel to see the city on the rock and the Palace of Versailles to see the former splendor of the French royalty.

Favorite Cities

Any list of our favorite places in France would be topped by Paris. It’s an incredible city and in the running for the best in the world. But of course we’d been to Paris before so we knew that we’d love it. What was more interesting to me were the cities that we stayed in which I didn’t expect to be so alluring. While we enjoyed every single city that we stayed in, there were three places that surprised me the most.

Nantes is France’s sixth largest city, but I feel like it’s barely known. It had so much green space and we fell in love with all of the parks. It has a world class art museum, excellent thrift stores, and a unique downtown area. It’s built on a hill so there are spots to find good views. And if you need a change, there’s an island in the middle of the Loire river that is like stepping into a completely different city just by crossing a bridge.

Grenoble was our very first stop and we loved it. I spent a fair amount of time trying to determine if it was great because of the excitement of being our first French destination or if it was truly spectacular on its own. Based on the fact that it’s in this list, you can probably guess what conclusion I drew. There are views of the Alps in multiple directions from all over town. It has plentiful river paths and hiking trails. Some of the trails even connect to nearby cities if you want to go for long bike rides. It was really, really pretty. 

Our last monthly stay was in Nancy. We weren’t even going to stay in Nancy originally, preferring to stay in nearby Metz. But we found a nice apartment and that tipped the scale. I’m glad we chose it, because Nancy was a very pleasant surprise. The massive botanical garden was such a treat. Its unique Art Nouveau architecture spread all over town was really fun. And it had lots of little quirks that kept things interesting.

Biggest Adventure

We were walking to the store in Rouen one day last July when Katie’s hat was blown off of her head while crossing a bridge over the Seine. It was deposited into the water far below and we chased it along the bank for nearly a mile down the river. At that point we miraculously found an accessible pier where I quickly stripped down to my underwear and jumped in the river to grab it. We never made it to the grocery that day, but we did get her hat back. The full unabridged tale is in my Rouen post and I think it’s worth reading if you haven’t before.

French Attitudes 

The French get a bad rap when it comes to poor attitudes and snootiness. We found that most people were very laid back and not bothered at all by things that would send most Americans into a tizzy. My best example is from the grocery store. About 90% of the time, we had to weigh our produce before going to checkout. This is pretty common in Europe. But of course it’s not ubiquitous, so there were stores where it wasn’t necessary. This led to a couple of instances where we thought that it would be weighed at checkout but we screwed up and should’ve weighed it ourselves. When that happened, I scurried back to the produce area to weigh our items as quickly as I could while the cashier finished with the other scannable goods. 

Inevitably, it takes longer to run to the produce section and weigh the fruit than it does to scan the rest of our items. This meant that there was always a longer wait for the people in line behind us. At no point did any of these people get huffy, make comments, or have any issues at all. They just dismissed our apologies as if they weren’t necessary. This happened 3 different times and not a single person was bothered in the least. It was incredible.

The other prime example of the attitude differences is when it comes to worker strikes. National and regional train unions, along with city public transit employees often threaten to strike and will actually shut service down in a bargaining capacity over contract disputes. We encountered one first hand when we were attempting to get from Nîmes to Paris but weren’t sure if the strikes would be solved in time for our travel. I feel like most Americans would be outraged that their travel plans were impacted. But not the French. Their attitudes were almost universally in favor of the striking workers. Protesting is so ingrained into French culture that it seems like everyone is of the opinion that strikes are for the greater good and sometimes they have to happen for the workers to get what they deserve. 

Language Challenges

French people are funny about their language however. We practiced our French for several months before showing up and naturally continued while there. So we knew some basics going in, but obviously we were still beginners. What we found is that the French simultaneously expect you to speak French but also switch to English when you can’t understand them or you’re fumbling for your words. That combination makes it very hard to move past the beginner stage, which I don’t feel like we ever did.

It seemed like all of the French we encountered was at an advanced level. Very few times did anyone attempt to speak more slowly or more simply to help with our comprehension. Compared to our time in Latin America, it felt like most people weren’t interested in helping us get better. No one sprinkled English words into their French or tried to nudge us along. They either wanted fluency or to just speak in English. 

As an example of their attitude towards the French language, I went to the optometrist while we were in Toulouse in February 2025. That was my first eye appointment since 2018, so it was due. We found a place that spoke English and booked an appointment. The ophthalmologist was curious why I was visiting her instead of just going to a doc in the US, so I explained the whole year-long stay and how we were going to visit 12 different cities for a month each. I expected her to be excited for us or have a recommendation or something like that. Instead, she immediately blurts out “You’re going to learn French, right?” Oh yeah. No problem!

While our communication skills were always limited, our French vocabulary did improve a ton during our stay. We learned a bunch of new words and are much improved at reading signs, labels, and other things written in French. It’s just that our speaking and listening skills never really advanced to the level that we expected. 

Bread And Cheese

We ate baguettes multiple times per week and tried several different boulangeries in each city. It’s amazing to me that the same thing made within strict guidelines could have so much variety. They all had at least subtle differences in chewiness, crust, salt level, and overall flavor. It allowed us to have a favorite place to buy a baguette if we wanted to make a sandwich versus if we just wanted to eat it with a salad or while walking down the street. It was a fun experiment to determine the best of these. And I think the most expensive one we found was still only €1.40, but almost all of them cost between €1.20-€1.30. It’s such an incredible deal, it was hard to say no.

It’s not just baguettes that we enjoyed either. All of the bread was amazing. Of course the plentiful boulangeries were delicious, but every decent grocery store had their own bakery with excellent fresh loaves available too. We quickly settled into a routine of starting the day with some good toast topped with soft cheese. Usually it was a cheese found countrywide like brie, camembert, or coulommiers, but there were lots of regional specialties that we had fun sampling too. The truth is that anything eaten with that bread is going to be delicious. It took less than a week after leaving France to really start missing the bread. It’s truly the best.

Airbnb Rent Comparison

We stayed in 13 Airbnb apartments in 12 different cities. Our most expensive stay was a well-located apartment in downtown Lille during peak summer for $81/night. That handily outpaced our two Paris stays which came in second at $71/night. The cheapest place we stayed was Dijon during the winter, where we had a nice one bedroom on the outskirts for barely over $50/night. In total we spent just over $23,000 on rent, which was an average of $1918 per month and made up 55% of our total spending. (If you click on any of the cities in the spreadsheet below, it’ll take you to the full city post with pictures and descriptions of our Airbnb apartment.)

Total Spending

While paying for short term rentals was reasonably expensive, the remainder of our stay was remarkably affordable. We took 7 day trips. We saw the dentist twice and the optometrist once for new glasses and contacts. We visited all of the art museums and even some museums with other focuses. We ate a ridiculous amount of cheese. Even with all that, we still only spent just over $42,000 for our year in France. That includes everything from our Spotify subscription to every Euro we donated to street musicians. While that is more than we have been spending, I feel like we got great value for our money and it was definitely worth it.

Despite moving around every month, our stays did start to feel somewhat repetitive. While the cities and sites changed, they also have a lot in common. We found ourselves shopping at the same stores and buying the same brands. Even though we really loved the year and every city we visited, by the end I think we were both feeling some wanderlust. That might be because we’ve ruined ourselves forever thanks to this nomadic lifestyle that we’ve been living since 2019. Or maybe we just knew our time was ending and we had to set our sights on the next thing because of that. It’s hard to tell.

There was so much to like about France. The cities were all great because they focus on pedestrian friendly areas and public parkland. Traveling was easy due to the extensive train network. The food was wonderful, especially the bread and cheese. And all of the art was just incredible. We never tired of seeing the creative works of so many supremely talented artists. It was a great year.