Travel Stories

  Do you have a word for 2024?   About three months before every new year, for some reason, a word comes to me that tends to encapsulate what my next year will be about.   And the word that came to me for 2024 was Strength.   I never know how this will play…

  I love that in the South of France it can be just as lovely in the winter as in the summer.   In fact, summer in my opinion, with temperatures running well into the 30’s these days, is far too hot to walk around and explore unless you get up at 6 am and…

  As I begin a new year, I am reflective about the journey I have taken to write about Paris that began in 2018.   Yes, I have been doing this for 5 years now (with a library of almost 200 blogs)!     This all started with an idea to create my so-called “retirement…

When I am in Paris, I often find myself walking across the historic Place de la République, the former roundabout remodeled into the city’s largest pedestrian zone. (right across from the Metro hub by the same name.) Usually, I am on my way somewhere else but my eye is always drawn to the towering bronze…

  What is it about a little independent bookstore that is so compelling?   Where one must slither sideways to pass but you still end up scraping by other patrons.   Where you may have to step over indiscriminate piles of books on the floor,  and where other new, used, and rare tomes are lovingly…

It was a scorching Friday morning when I arrived at the majestic train station in Nice (designed in the 1800s in the majestic Louis XIII style).   The platform was already packed, and I ended up having to squeeze in and remained slammed up against a mob of other tourists and locals with every square…

  This PIC above is ME dreaming! About having a place that I can return to time and time again in France!   And I finally did it! If you have been following along with my story, you know that “mon amour et moi” purchased a fractional property* sight unseen in Vieux Nice|Old Nice this…

I love that in Paris mature women seem to be respected and valued for their longevity and wisdom. The older they get, it seems even more so. I have often eaten alone in a restaurant surrounded by women of a certain age, many of them definitely over 75 and some well over 80, sitting with…

  I was skeptical that a “stroll” along the famous Avenue des Champs-Élysées was the right thing for this couple of jet-lagged seniors to do on our first day in Paris. “Mon amour” suggested it as a good initiation back into the city. My partner had not been to Paris in a very long time…