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View over the Marne valley from a wooded hilltop, fields and vineyards in afternoon light.

Monthly tours

The friendships start on the bus.

One Saturday a month we fill a minibus — half French neighbours who have lived here all their lives, half Americans who arrived last spring — and we go and see this region together. People get on as strangers. They come back with names in their phones, invitations for Sunday, and a story they'll still be telling in ten years.

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Why we do this

The fastest way to make a French friend is to spend a Saturday sitting next to one.

Settling in France can quietly shrink your world to a waiting room, a folder of documents and the three people you already knew. These days out do the opposite. They put you beside someone whose family has farmed this valley for four generations, and they put that person beside someone who has just crossed an ocean to be their neighbour. By the drive home, nobody is a visitor. That's the whole design: not a tour with locals in it, but one group made of both.

  • Half local, half new

    Every departure is balanced on purpose. French members, newcomers, and their families ride together — you are never a tour group looking at people's lives from a window.

  • You get a seat partner

    We pair each newcomer with a French member for the journey. The first conversation is arranged, so it never has to be brave. After that it looks after itself.

  • Both languages, no shame

    Everything happens in French and English. Our French members come precisely to be practised on — mangle a tense and you'll get a correction and a laugh, not a look.

  • Whole families, all ages

    Kids meet kids. Grandparents talk to grandparents. This is where school-gate friendships and Sunday lunch invitations actually begin.

Who's on the bus

People who met on a Saturday and never stopped seeing each other.

These are members and neighbours, in their own words.

  • "I sat next to Claudine on the way to Belleau because someone put us together. She has now taught my daughter to make a tarte, corrected six months of my French, and called the prefecture on my behalf twice. I came for a day out. I got a grandmother for my kids."

    Megan

    American, arrived 2025 · Château-Thierry

  • "J'y suis allé pour rendre service — I went to help out, one Saturday. Now there are four Americans at my table every month and my English is better than my son's. Our village had gone quiet. These people have made it noisy again."

    Bernard

    Retired, born here · Essômes-sur-Marne

  • "My husband and I had been in France eight months and knew nobody outside the paperwork. One harvest morning fixed that. We're now in three group chats, two of them entirely in French, and we host the January tasting at our place."

    Andre

    American, member since 2026 · Épernay

Where we go

Seven days out, within reach of Château-Thierry.

Each one runs monthly, and each one is built so people end up talking. Pick a date, tell us who's coming, and we'll keep a seat for you.

Mist between the pale trunks of a beech wood in northern France at dawn.

Belleau

Belleau Wood & the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery

Americans and French standing at the same graves, twelve kilometres from our front door — and the French families who have tended them since 1918.

Most members call this the most moving thing they do all year. The names on the stones came from the same American towns our members did; the hands that keep the grass and the flowers have been local ones for a century. We walk slowly and we say very little. Afterwards we sit down together for coffee, and that is when people tell each other about their grandfathers. Nothing bonds two groups like standing quietly in the same place for an hour.

Distance
12 km from Château-Thierry
Time
Half day · morning

What you take homeYou leave with someone who now knows your family's story — and whose family story you know.

How we visit: This is a burial ground and a place of mourning. We visit in small numbers, keep voices low, follow the cemetery's guidance, and never treat it as a photo stop.

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View over the Marne valley from a wooded hilltop, fields and vineyards in afternoon light.

Château-Thierry

Château-Thierry American Monument, Cote 204

The great stone monument on the hill, the whole Marne valley below it, and a neighbour beside you pointing out the bits that matter.

The view is only half of it. The other half is the French member standing next to you saying: that's my village, that's the school my children went to, that road takes you to Paris in an hour, don't use it on a Friday. Newcomers arrive disoriented and leave with someone else's mental map of home laid over their own — which is more or less the definition of belonging.

Distance
3 km from the house
Time
Half day · late morning

What you take homeYou leave knowing where you live, and knowing who to ask next time.

How we visit: A memorial to the American and French soldiers of 1918. We keep the visit respectful and give people room to be quiet if they need it.

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Empty cobbled street of an old French town with honey-coloured stone houses and a stone archway.

Château-Thierry old town

Jean de La Fontaine's town & the medieval castle

The birthplace of France's great fabulist, the streets around it, and the castle ruins that named the town — done at conversation pace.

Here's what actually happens: a French member recites, from memory, the fable they learned at seven. An American reads the same lines aloud, badly. Everybody laughs, somebody explains the joke, and two people who were shy at 10am are arguing about translation by noon. It's the cheerful, low-stakes end of settling in — and it happens to be excellent preparation for the civic exam.

Distance
On foot from the house
Time
Half day · morning, walking

What you take homeYou leave with an inside joke, which is the first sign of a real friendship.

How we visit: A living town, not a film set. We shop where the neighbours shop and book the museum ahead so we never arrive as a crowd.

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Vaulted chalk cellar in Champagne with rows of dusty bottles under a single warm lamp.

Hautvillers · Épernay

Hautvillers & the cellars of Épernay

The hillside village where Dom Pérignon worked, the chalk cellars beneath the Avenue de Champagne, and a very long lunch in between.

We visit small growers who are glad to be asked about their work by people who genuinely want to hear it — and our French members translate the parts that get technical. Standing in a cold chalk tunnel is the memorable bit; the lunch afterwards is where the friendships actually land. Two hours at one table does more than any icebreaker ever invented.

Distance
50 km east
Time
Full day

What you take homeYou leave with a grower who knows your name and a lunch table that ran an hour over.

How we visit: We visit small independent houses and we pay our way. Tasting is optional, soft drinks always available, and nobody is ever the one who drove.

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Interior of a gothic cathedral with tall stone columns and coloured light from stained glass.

Reims

Reims Cathedral & the Palais du Tau

The coronation cathedral of the kings of France, its Chagall windows, the treasury next door — and lunch on the square afterwards.

One building that explains French history, statehood and the long argument about what this country is. Our French members bring the version they were taught at school; our American members bring the questions no French person thinks to ask. Then everyone eats on the square for two hours. That lunch is the actual reason we go.

Distance
70 km east
Time
Full day

What you take homeYou leave having had the conversation you'd never have had at home.

How we visit: An active place of worship. We time visits around services, dress considerately, and keep the group quiet inside.

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Hands lifting a green crate full of dark harvested grapes in a vineyard on an autumn morning.

A grower's vineyard near Château-Thierry

Les vendanges: a morning in the harvest

Pick alongside a local family for a morning, crate by crate, then eat with them at the long table when the sun's high.

Nothing dissolves the word 'foreigner' faster than working shoulder to shoulder in the mud with someone at 7:30 in the morning. You get filthy, your French improves out of sheer necessity, and by midday somebody who didn't know you at dawn is handing you bread and asking about your kids. Members come back from this one changed.

Distance
Under 20 km
Time
Seasonal · September–October, early start

What you take homeYou leave with aching arms, purple hands, and an invitation for next year.

How we visit: Real work on a working estate, arranged with growers who want us there. Children take part at their own pace; we follow the grower's rules on everything.

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Long wooden tasting table in a French stone room with champagne glasses, bottles, bread and cheese under warm lamp light.

A village cellar near Château-Thierry

The tasting table: an evening with a vigneron

Champagne and the still wines of the Marne, poured by the person who made them, around one long table with food coming out between pours.

This is our least touristic evening and our most sociable. No standing at a bar, no scores, no swirling and pronouncing. One table, seated French-next-to-American on purpose, a grower explaining what's in the glass in both languages, and bread, cheese and something hot arriving in the middle. Wine here is a reason to sit still for three hours facing someone new — which is exactly how long it takes for people to stop being polite and start being friends. Phone numbers get exchanged at the end of this one more than any other.

Distance
Under 25 km
Time
Evening · about three hours

What you take homeYou leave with a number in your phone and a standing invitation to the next one.

How we visit: We buy from the grower and we pour modestly. Non-drinkers get the same seat, the same welcome and the same beautiful glass of something else; drivers are looked after, and there's always a lift home for anyone who'd rather not drive.

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Practical things

What a tour day actually looks like.

We gather at the house first

Coffee at La Maison de l'Amitié thirty minutes before departure, and introductions before anyone boards — so nobody arrives alone to a car park full of strangers.

Cost is never the reason you stay home

Transport and guiding come with Resident membership, and site fees are kept low or covered. If money is tight, tell us quietly — we will sort it out and nobody else will know.

Back before dinner

Half days return by 13:00, full days by 18:00, tasting evenings by 22:00 with lifts home. School runs and childcare are planned around, not ignored.

Bring a neighbour

French friends and neighbours are welcome on every departure — in fact we need them. The point is a mixed group, not a group apart.

Somebody is going to be very glad they sat next to you.

Come once and see who you meet. Most people come back the following month with someone they've brought along.

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