Black Diva and the Roman Theater of Orange
I don't often show pictures of myself with celebrities, artists, winegrowers, chefs, politicians or other living icons that I meet in the course of my work, but that’s the best way to introduce the beautiful local Diva that I met the other day while in Orange, in the Vaucluse area of Provence.
A Champagne Diary: 3 Grapes, 3 Lunches, 3 Dinners, a Bit of Chocolate, and...
“Drink the wine, not the label” is both a lofty and a homey approach to wine, and nowhere is that more important than with Champagne, the sparkling wine that we so readily identify with brands, romance, celebration, and money to burn that we sometimes forget that it’s wine at all.
The Painter’s Wife: Aline Charigot Renoir and the Renoir Home in Essoyes
As the village of Essoyes in southern Champagne prepares to open Renoir’s home to the public and the surrounding department of Aube celebrates this as the Year of Renoir, Janet Hulstrand, a part-time American resident of Essoyes, examines the life of Aline Charigot Renoir, wife of the artist and mother of three artists.
Saint Léonard de Noblat: Pilgrims, Prisoners, Pastries, Porcelain, Paper
A two-part article in which we encounter in central France along the Way of Saint James: Leonard, the patron saint of prisoners; undernourished pilgrims; massepain, a rustic pastry, and a former hub of artisanship (paper, porcelain, leather).
Dreams of Romance on Normandy’s Flowered Coast from Cabourg to Deauville, Part 2 of...
Part 2 of a three-part investigation into potentially romantic hotels on the Flowered Coast of Normandy, featuring the Grand Hotel in Cabourg, Les Manoirs de Tourgéville near Deauville, the Royal and Normandy Barriere Hotels in Deauville, several less luxurious hotels in the area and recommendable restaurants.
Travel Beyond the Clichés While Looking Back In Angers
There I was in the local newspaper in a picture borrowed from the web and a paragraph hailing me as “a globetrotting American writer with a new book out entitled Travel Beyond the Clichés.”
Travel Photography Festival in Bordeaux
Now here’s a photography festival that’s right up our alley: the 22nd annual Travel Photography Festival of Bordeaux, Itinéraires des Photographes Voyageurs. The festival, running April 1-29, 2012, reveals a diversity of approaches to travel and place by French photographers who collectively present far-flung “itineraries” from Bordeaux to Tokyo to Africa to South America.
Grandparenting Abroad: When You’re Old Enough I’ll Take You to Paris
Six important points of advice for fulfilling intergenerational travels, particularly for grandparents interested in traveling to Paris with a grandchild.
Corso illuminé (4/8)
The Corso Illuminé is the night parade that circles two times around Place Massena on Tuesday and Saturday nights. I’ve been to two corsos, or corsi, now and they are rather spectacular.