Curate: verb (used with object),cu·rat·ed,cu·rat·ing.

1. to take charge of (a museum) or organize (an art exhibit): to curate a photography show.
2. to pull together, sift through, and select for presentation, as music or website content: “We curate our merchandise with a sharp eye for trending fashion,” the store manager explained (dictionary.com).

Have you ever wanted to travel to a place that is somewhere slightly off the beaten path, yet in a country that has captivated your imagination or (if you’ve been there before) your heart? Going by yourself is a bit daunting, and yet you can’t bring yourself to join a big tour group where you have to be on a bus at 8 am sharp every morning for a day of practically running through a “bucket list” of monuments that you’re somehow supposed to see or else you haven’t really gone to that place?

We do not have to be those kind of tourists. In fact, we don’t have to be tourists at all.

We can instead choose to be travelers. Human beings who enter a place with respect, who slip into a place quietly and instead of demanding that the place fit their needs, learn the rhythms and, of course, pleasures that can be revealed to them if they will only take the time to see them.

What if, instead of racing around to check off a list, we hand select and carefully choose what we can truly appreciate and enjoy and, dare I say it, learn from?

What if we could curate experiences and places that speak to us, to our hearts, and leave us exhilarated instead of exhausted?

We can.

And so I invite you, friends, to come with me as travelers, not tourists, on a voyage into my treasured parts of France that will do exactly that.