Hi Nick,
Sounds like a exciting vacation. Southern France I have heard lot of positive comments about. I had a friend who had a remote oprerated observatorium in Southern France.
Someone provided me France Astro Tutorial links, see here:
http://www.astrofriend.eu/links/link...rotourism.html
I created a new page where common sunshine tourist places for Swedish people are. It's written in Swedish but the maps from Lightpollutionmap is in English so you can follow my ideas where to go in Europe.
Swedish sunshine tourist places:
http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/...sydeuropa.html
What's terrific with this places is that they are very easy to find and cheap for they who live in Sweden.
/Lars