Join Us in France Travel Podcast

Annie Sargent has been running this show since 2014, and it shows. She's a Toulouse-based tour guide who records weekly conversations with travelers who've just come back from France, plus the occasional solo episode where she rants about things like the Paris Metro ticket system or why you probably shouldn't rent a car in Provence in August. The format is almost always the same: a listener calls in, describes their itinerary, and Annie weighs in with opinions that are often contrarian and usually correct. She'll tell you the Louvre is worth two hours max, that Mont Saint-Michel is a nightmare on weekends, and that the best cassoulet isn't in Carcassonne. What makes the show work is that Annie doesn't pretend France is uniformly magical. She'll warn you about pickpockets near Sacré-Cœur in one breath and then spend twenty minutes on a small village in the Lot that most American tourists have never heard of. Episodes run around an hour. The back catalog is enormous, over 500 episodes, so you can queue up shows on specific regions before a trip. If you're planning anything in France, this is the first podcast to subscribe to.