We’ll meet in the morning in the heart of Toulouse, around breakfast. This will also be the occasion of our morning meeting, to get launched with joy and deep French immersion!

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After breakfast, we’ll take a walking tour around downtown, where I will show you some of my favorite streets. Lunch will be at a typical “cassoulet” house known to savvy locals, and we’ll have another stroll in the afternoon before heading to Foix.

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Foix is just one hour south of Toulouse. When we get there, you’ll have time to get settled into an apartment, which will be your base for the rest of the experience. We’ll cook dinner together for extra French practice.

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Friday is the best day for your first full day in Foix: market day! You’ll get to experience a vibrant and colorful farmers market with fresh sheep cheese and yogurt, lots of local, organic vegetables, and all sorts of artisanal goodies. It will be a good opportunity for a French-acquisition shopping challenge to buy ingredients we’ll need for some of our meals.

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And precisely, after market, we’ll head back to our kitchen to cook lunch together: a simple French fare which will be the base of more language acquisition.

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Our stomachs filled, we’ll head to the Foix castle: a medieval gem more than 1,000 years old, right in the middle of town.

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We’ll have dinner at a local restaurant.

The Ariège region is fortunate to have kept a lot of its local traditions, including festivals for a few of its major crops. So on Saturday, we’ll head to the Mas d’Azil for their famous “fête de la figue”, where you’ll get to stroll through the stands of very local craft, sample fig jams and other fig desserts, and, if we're lucky, witness the march of the fig brotherhoods!

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If the group dynamic flows that way, we will also tour a local legend: a very peculiar museum filled with a man’s hundreds of imaginary machines and objects.

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While lunch will be taken autonomously at the fig festival, to give you a chance for a break from the group, dinner will be shared together at a restaurant.

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Oh, and by the way, I have a surprise to drive through on our way to Mas d’Azil.

I moved to Ariège in huge parts because of its natural beauty: every day when I look around me, I feel like I’m in paradise. So, let me take you an hour south of Foix deeply into the mountains. We will drive to étang de Soulcem, a mountain lake with breathtaking scenery right from the parking lot.

There, I can also show you old buildings used by shepherds for their work. After all, the Pyrenees is active with sheep who graze in full liberty in the mountains.

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Those who care to walk further will get a chance to, while those who prefer to stay put can indulge in the scenery just as much. We will have a gourmet picnic by the lake, comprised of local charcuterie, cheese, veggies, and more.

Have you ever imagined walking through the village in Beauty and the Beast? While Mirepoix may not be the specific one that gave inspiration to Disney or Cocteau, it has a definite allure of it. On Monday, it will be buzzing with market activity, but you will also get to simply stroll through its quaint streets. I will also show you its cathedral and see if you can pinpoint why it feels bizarre.

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After lunch in one of the gourmet restaurants of this village populated by foodies, I will drive you a little further, to a village filled with art. Fanjeaux is a very small village, so you will get to picture what life in very rural France might be like.

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We will head home for dinner, which we will cook together for extra hands-on practice of the language.

In the 1800s, the urban wealthy started sojourning in mountain thermal towns for health retreats. Ax-Les-Thermes is one of those places that bloomed thanks to its hot springs. Hotels and other residences were built, along with a building to make the hot sulfurous waters more comfortable to bathe in. Small foot baths were also added to the plazas.

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I will take you to Ax to show you an example of one of those towns. You will also get to see what living in the mountains today feels like. Those who want to can spend two hours at the hot bath building for a deep relaxation: a good way to give your brain a break (after all, it’s been working hard on acquiring all that French!).

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We’ll have lunch at a typical restaurant. We’ll cook dinner one more time for a deep cultural and language experience.​

Day 7 is mercredi, and it’s time to go even deeper into Ariège! What I mean is I’ll take you to one of its 3,000 caves (only 6 are open to tourists). The one I’m taking you to is even more special because it is toured on a boat, as the longest underground navigable river of Europe runs through it. The tour is guided, which makes it a good opportunity to work on your French.

(Note that if you tend to feel claustrophobic or for any other such reason, you can opt out, of course).

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We’ll have lunch at a restaurant in Foix, and dessert at the best pâtisserie in town. Miam!

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The afternoon will be kept mellow and dinner will be taken autonomously, to give you a chance​ to explore town on your own, go for a nature walk straight from town, or simply rest.

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(Plenty of tips will be given to you to make dinner and autonomous times easy).

Since we’re going deeper into Ariège, let’s also do so chronologically: we will visit the Parc de la Préhistoire, an indoor-outdoor museum that showcases fossils and skeletons, along with reconstitutions of scenes of what life was like in Ariège 16,000 years ago. Yes, a lot of artefacts were found here!

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From a language acquisition perspective, the Parc de la Préhistoire has that nice side that you can read signs at your own pace and, more importantly, attend demonstrations of how to make fire, tools and the like. In those demonstrations, staff members take their time to explain and interact at a relaxed pace, giving you many opportunities to catch words or full sentences and to produce language yourself.

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We’ll have lunch at a restaurant. After the park, I’ll take you on some nice personal history and nature walk around the area, as my house is actually right next to the park!

Day 9 is kept open on purpose. During our breakfast meeting, you will use your best French skills to express and discuss what to do that day. Based on the group’s interests, we can spend more time in quaint villages, beautiful nature, at historical sites or visiting unique attractions that you can only find in Ariège.

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For our last dinner together, we will eat at a distinguished restaurant with many typical French food options that you will only find in authentic places or at a French grandmother’s table.

Time to say “Au revoir”. We’ll take our time savoring our last croissants and local breakfast goodies (you’ll see, the sheep milk yogurt is out of this world!) and chat casually –and naturally! That day, you’ll take in that your French may have become more fluid and less effortful! Congratulations!

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After breakfast, we’ll head to Toulouse, where I can drop you off at the airport, train station or city center, at your convenience.

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After we part, you might feel like you’re waking up from a dream. And oddly enough, that dream was in French and it was comfortable. Now, you can go back home and build on the amazing French acquisition boost you just received, or you can first prolong your stay in France, with a trip extension with me, with another tour, or on your own (I’ll be happy to give you advice as to where else to go).