Hello from France!

I have a few housing and food question for those seriously interested in the baking class in France.

(And haha, don’t fall off your chairs when you see how inexpensive prices are here compared to Boston!)

I am shooting for 30 rooms because we are limiting the class to 30 participants. Each housing a single or a couple (class participant and a plus 1).  Some are rooms in homes of villagers (mostly renting me the whole house but in a few cases, an independent room and bathroom), some are Gites, we have Chalets (think summer cabins, with a living room, dinning area, kitchen and bedroom downstairs, and a large room upstairs with multiple beds (we are counting upstairs as one bedroom/1 person or couple), and some airbnb houses (the most expensive.) We also have received prices for 2 hotels, both 12km away at the bottom of different sides of the hill, but those aren’t included in the 30 we are finding in the village, and surrounding hameau. One hotel is a medieval chateau, with all the glory that entails, but it is 12 km on curvy/hilly back country roads from where the class will be held.  The hotel rooms range from €100 night/standard to €250 night deluxe. So anyone who chooses that option would need a car.

If you are interested in sharing an upstairs chalet room with another class participant, please also let me know. The upstairs rooms are approx (i have to do a currency conversion) $300 for the week, so a shared room for week with another class participant would be $150 each person. We are limiting these shared rooms to the chalets. We have 5 chalets.

My question is whether anyone who is serious about attending plans to bring their family. Because than we need more rooms. The chalets, for example, advertise they are for 6-8 persons because it is summer type housing. Since they only have two bedrooms, we are only counting them as sleeping 2 participants. But if one participant wants the whole chalet for their family, etc. i need to have more than 30 rooms. So please let me know via email ASAP if you seriously are planning to sign up and you will need a whole house/chalet etc for your travel partners. INFO@VIOLETTEGF.COM We haven’t finished the housing pricing but the village housing will be approximately $250 per person for the week. The gites and chalets $300-$350 per room for the week. The airbnb (in a hameau 3 km away) are $500-650 per sm house or room a week, but again, like the chalets, are organized for larger families to share with limited bedrooms.  We will have a van available to pick people up, or you can walk the back country roads.

The other question is food. If you are a meat eater and plan to sign up when registration opens  please email me ASAP. (Again, we are limiting to 30 participants, and almost 90 have written expressing interest, so you will need to hop on it and register right away, when we open registration. ) The chef priced food for the week based on a largely vegetarian menu. I said i thought we’d have meat eaters. The meat would be (all local) wild pig, beef and lamb. And meat of course, is more expensive than vegetarian food. Instead of him assuming all would eat meat and pricing his bill that way, i’d like a more realistic count of meat eaters to give to him. It will help keep costs down.

I’m only in France this week, so please respond today if possible. Your input will help keep pricing lower!

Thanks, Leesteffy