North Carolina State Capitol, Raleigh. Photo GLK

One reason that a road trip in Europe is such a wondrous experience is that over relatively short distances one encounter different regions, cultures, histories, accents/languages, and cuisines.

Over equal distances, those differences are naturally less remarkable in the U.S. due to a briefer, more uniform history, a common language, and the ease with which citizens move and immigrants arrive.

Furthermore, we tend to approach American regions from the air rather than from the ground, leading us to think of major cities as hubs rather than an old center of regional civilization.

Given the opportunity, I like to apply on-the-ground European-style travel to my touring in the U.S., and so in December I took a week-long road trip from New Jersey to Florida, with stops at Philadelphia, Richmond, Raleigh, Charleston, Savannah, and Orlando before arriving in south Florida.

I logged about 1400 miles. In terms of distance that’s like going from Amsterdam to Lisbon, with overnights in Brussels, Paris, Bordeaux, Biarritz, Salamanca, and Porto. Imagine! (In terms of the cost of gas and tolls, you wouldn’t even get through France.)

New Jersey to Florida may sound less exotic than Amsterdam to Lisbon, but a road trip is a road trip, especially when going it alone. And I had mission—in addition to seeing people along the way (an old friend, a younger brother) and visiting places I’d never been (Raleigh, Charleston, Savannah), I wanted to find French bakeries along the way and try their pastries.

Virginia State Capitol, Richmond. Photo GLK

This was my second road trip for the year. In April I’d taken a largely alternate route on a week-long drive north from Florida—Naples, Tampa, Atlanta, Columbia, Myrtle Beach, Richmond, Fredericksburg, Arlington, Baltimore—and also tracked down several bakeries along the way.

Over the next month or two I’ll be posting a series about notable French and French-inspired bakeries that I came upon on either my north-south road trip or my south-north road trip. I’ve already written about Philadelphia on this blog so those investigations won’t be repeated in the upcoming series. You can read about Franco-Philadelphia here.

Readers who would like to provide their impressions of any French and French-inspired bakeries along the above mentioned route can send them as a “Comment” to this blog or by e-mail to francerevisited@aol.com.

- GLK