It was a spur of the moment kind of decision. Should we drive to Cahors today? A sleepy town on the Lot River about an hour south of our Airbnb in Beynac, Cahors is another place deeply embedded in our mutual memories of the summer of 1979. We remembered a long, hot, arduous bike ride of fifty hilly miles or… Read more »
Having traveled the length and breadth of France for over fifty years, there are few spots we don’t know and love. There was a gap, however. In 1972 we did drive through Lorraine in our blundering, naive, twenty-two year old fashion, but we had not returned. When a friend told us about a trip to Verdun and along the Moselle… Read more »
What do we like to do in Paris? Eat, drink and walk. And walk. And walk, We arrived in Paris on Friday evening and by Tuesday evening we had walked 40.4 miles and climbed over 100 flights of stairs! That is what comes of staying near enough to Montmartre to making walking up feasible, and also from having friends who… Read more »
Hearts full of memories and longing, we headed to St Pancras Station in London to climb aboard the Eurostar to the Gare du Nord, Paris. Customs was efficient , vaccination cards required, and one Guiness and one glass of white wine in hand, we boarded our train. Despite a delay once we re-emerged from under the English Channel (une fatalité… Read more »
We had never been to Oxford, and this weighed on me heavily. So armed with advance (cheap) tickets that I purchased on Trainline, we ubered to Paddington and hopped onto our train to Oxford. We were able to walk from the station to our hotel and then set out to meet our guide for our 3 hour bike tour of… Read more »
Over the years, we have had some animated discussions about the food in England with our friend Alex. He and his wife Sheila insisted that the food was good here. Not being a fan of mushy peas, I begged to differ. Okay, so maybe I’ve been won over–although I’m still not a fan of mushy peas. Lately, we have had… Read more »
Despite my not so distant ancestral roots, the UK took us a while to love. In fact, it took decades. In our youth we struggled with the weather, the food and the prices. We spent the first 6 weeks of our aforementioned epic journey in 1972 traveling through England, Scotland and Wales in our tiny, red Renault 4L. The weather… Read more »
INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL IN AN ALMOST POST-PANDEMIC WORLD “Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer” – Anonymous. When Ray and I announced to friends and family that we were going on a two-week long Smithsonian Journey to Portugal and Spain in March the news was met with a variety of reactions: sharp intakes of breath, rolling eyes,… Read more »
The Medina of Fès was the most jaw-dropping site we had seen so far! The enormous honeycomb of white-washed stucco buildings under cerulean skies is the kind of vision we had all been waiting for! Over 9,000 alleys wind their way through the souk which still lies behind medieval gated walls. Enclosed within the walls are also 350 active mosques… Read more »