Château de Beauregard: A Castle Road Less Taken
Tourists in the Loire Valley generally head only for the A-list castles. But for sightseers who dislike crowds and relish the possibility of running into a congenial chateau owner, quieter slices of 16th-century splendor are a few minutes away at the Chateau de Beauregard, 3 miles southeast of Blois.
Chambord, the Loire Valley’s XXL Château, Gets a Tourist Makeover
When you can't get any bigger, you just have to get better. Chambord, the massive chateau in the Loire Valley, 9 miles east of Blois, is in the midst of a major development plan (€4.5 million invested in 2014) to make the castle more user-friendly and, ultimately, self-financing.
Film Review: Suite Française
Suite Française by Irene Némirovsky took the literary world by storm when it was first published in France in 2004, followed up with an English translation in 2006. The sensation had to do with the quality of the work itself in conjunction with the backstory, the sidestory and the epilogue relative to the author herself and her daughter Denise Epstein. Now comes the movie.
France Revisited Strikes Silver in Travel Media Competition
PASADENA, CA (Feb. 11, 2015)-- The North American Travel Journalists Association (NATJA) today announced that France Revisited, www.francerevisited.com won the Silver Award as first runner-up in the 2014 NATJA Awards Competition in the Online Travel Magazine category. This awards competition honors the “best of the best” in travel writing, photography and promotion that cover all aspects of the travel industry worldwide.
Editor of France Revisited on Lecture Tour in NJ, PA, DC
While the recent terrorist attacks in Paris caused some travelers to push the pause button on their immediate European travel plans, we can all be armchair travelers this month when New Jersey native and award-winning Paris-based travel writer Gary Lee Kraut explores France during a tour in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. from Feb. 16 to March 2, 2015.
To Be Charlie: A French Lesson
Paris, January 2015 -- A French lesson: "être Charlie," to believe in the importance of freedom of expression (as the French would call it); a...
The Assless Elephants of Chambery Head Off for Restoration
Imagine if Paris disassembled the Eiffel Tower to recast its iron or Carcassonne dismantled its ramparts to recut the stone and you can understand the visual trauma to the small city of Chambery in the foothills of the French Alps when the four beloved pachyderms of the Fountain of Elephants were removed...
Fish-Skin Leather Artisan Brings Siberian Tradition to Dordogne
Hidden in the Dordogne hills on a narrow street of the village of Fanlac, Janet Duignan discovers the marriage of ancient Siberian tradition and European craftsmanship in Kristof Mascher's fish leather handbags, belts and cases.
A Christmas Tour of France
France may be a deeply secular nation, but everyone gets into the spirit of what are called “the end of the year holidays” (les fêtes de fin d’année), meaning Christmas and more. Let’s take a tour of the Christmas season in France through Alsace, Champagne, Lille, Lyon, Provence, Nice and Paris.