The Green Traveler: The Camargue, a View from the Saddle
Exit Provence's lavender charms and enter its cowboy country, horseback riding in the sparsely populated marshland called the Camargue. By Laurence Bry.
Blade Running in Laguiole (Aveyron)
Corinne LaBalme ventures into Deep France to explore the cutting edge of cutlery in the town of Laguiole (Aveyron) and reports on the collision between age-old craftsmanship and high design at La Forge de Laguiole.
Blessed truffles in Provence
About a month ago I opened the e-newsletter that I receive monthly from the Vaucluse Tourist Board in Provence and saw that they were...
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.
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.
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...
Sylvie Deschamps, France’s Master Artist of Gold Embroidery
An interview with Sylvie Deschamps, France's Master Artist of gold embroidery and director of the Bégonia d'Or workshop in Rochefort, an upriver port town in western France. Includes demonstration video.
The Riviera Backcountry: In Search of the Source of the Var River
Lisa Watson sets out from a beach near Nice in search of the source of the Var River and discovers stunning vistas in the Riviera backcountry along the way.
In Roussillon: Stilettos and Misericordes at Fort Saint Elme
We are now accustomed to the tools of the trade of character assassination. But medieval warfare required tools of more penetrating assassination such as the stilettos and misericordes on display among other medieval weaponry and armor at Fort Saint Elme, overlooking the Mediterranean just north of the Spanish border at Collioure in Languedoc-Roussillon.