We seem to keep coming back to Paris, so how to keep her fresh and exciting? You can only marvel at the Eiffel Tower and Sacre Coeur so many times.  Our solution – pick a new neighbourhood, draw a 3-block radius around it and don’t go beyond.  We randomly choose Levallouis-Perret, partly because it’s on…

Caring for my warrior wife after knee replacement surgery was never meant to be easy. I was prepared for medicine chart tracking, pain management, emotional counseling, rehab exercises, special food requests, disrupted sleep – it’s what we both signed on for. What I didn’t anticipate was how her shiny new titanium joint would leave me…

Sacre-Couer and I go way back. On my first solo Europe trip in 1988 I sat out on the grass with two beautiful Israeli girls. They were unsuccessfully trying to explain the word Chutzpah when a very stern policeman started yelling at us. Efrat started speaking Hebrew and pretending not to understand, but the officer…

Finding good wine, visiting the impressive National Theater and a few of the 362 historic monuments, walking the vibrant old streets, and putting together a fresh local charcuterie tray for my wife’s breakfast are all easy and obvious things to do in Bordeaux. But to find the odd, quirky surprises, I turned as always to…

When you get invited to Diana Ross’ 170th birthday party in a swanky boutique hotel overlooking the French Riviera, the only possible answer is Yes! My mother Diana turned 80, and her foxy beau Ross turned 90, so they brought us, my brother and Ross’ granddaughter to Nice for a week of luxury, food, a…

Paris seems like an odd place to muse upon Going Slow.  But a Joy of travel isn’t just seeing new places; it’s how they help you reflect and reshape your understanding of your own wacky ways and world. Slow is not my habitual gear.  Whether on the soccer field or plowing through the endless Things…

Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche fell in love here in Flavigny-sur-Ozerain.  Belle lamented that “there must be more than this provincial life” in a French town just like this.  For one week at least, there was nothing to lament about this Peaceful medieval town. A few hours by fast train South-east of Paris, the long…