Art, Food & Wine Tours to France

Wendy has worked as a France travel expert and tour guide for 30 years. Based in Paris for many years, she now runs art, food and wine tours to France for small groups from her home base in New Zealand.

She has French nationality (as well as USA) and speaks French and English fluently. In 2013, she led the Paris, Provence and the Painters of Modern Life study tour to France for Victoria University Continuing Education and in 2017 led a culinary art tour through the South of France. The 2021 tour through the Bordeaux region and the Dordogne was postponed due to covid. Wendy is currently considering options for tours from 2024 onwards. Please contact Wendy for more details and to express your interest.

Bordeaux and the Dordogne: Gourmet, luxury small-group travel

Join our small group on an exclusive two-week gourmet wine and food tour of this fascinating culinary region of France. Dr. Wendy Joyce, who has lived in the Dordogne and knows its best-kept secrets, will be your bilingual cultural and culinary guide for the duration of the tour. For more details, view the itinerary below or email wendy@savour.org.nz

**Please note: this tour has been postponed from May 2021 due to Covid. Updated tour and new dates TBC

VIEW ITINERARY HERE

Paris, Provence, and the Painters of Modern Life

Our tour begins with a full week in Paris where we will gain insight into life in the nineteenth-century art capital, visiting monuments, sites, and neighbourhoods favoured by the artists and their friends. We will explore the city’s transformation under Baron Haussman and see masterpieces in the Musee d’Orsay and Musee Marmottan representative of major art movements of the time (Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism). On day seven we take a day-trip north to Compiegne, home of the museum of the Second Empire and the Chateau de Compiegne, autumn residence of Napolean III and his empress Eugenie.

On day 11 we travel north from Paris to Giverny to visit the home of Claude Monet and admire the famous gardens that inspired his series of water lily paintings. From Giverny we continue up to the Normandy coast to the village of Etretat with its soaring limestone cliffs that feature in numerous paintings of the era. After two nights in Etretat the tour heads south to Provence, in the footsteps of Paul Cezanne, who yearned to turn “Impressionism into something more solid and enduring.” The landscapes he painted near his home in Aix-en-Provence carried art from the nineteenth centuryinto the modern era and laid the foundations for the development of cubism.

A selection of images from the 2017 Tour

Kind Words

“This was my second tour with Wendy. As always, she was charming, lively, attentive, knowledgeable and her French is impeccable. Her insider knowledge of the areas we visited was a real asset.”

"I most enjoyed the group visits to the galleries/museums… the enthusiasm, knowledge, and assistance of the tour leader... the camaraderie of all the party."

“The pace of the tour was very relaxed with free time well balanced again museum visits, wine tastings, and beautiful meals in special places. Wendy's knowledge of France was such an asset--she found authentic restaurants and off-the-beaten track spots for us to visit, including an award-winning olive oil mill for tastings, local wineries and more!”

"Wendy was a great tour leader and everyone really enjoyed this trip! Thank you for making it possible and for creating such a well-balanced, varied and interesting itinerary."

“It was delightful to discover new places in a part of France I thought I knew well.”

“I especially appreciated the private cooking class with Peta Matthias in Uzès that Wendy organised for us. What delicious fun!”

“Wendy's language skills, buoyant personality and local knowledge were a real asset.”