My first three trips to France came over the course of about five years and the length of each trip increased about five-fold from one to the next. First, one month with about 20 students for a Winterim term in Paris. Next, just six of us from the same university [...]
As I mentioned in the prologue post about this Paris trip, one of the earlier decisions I made was to get out of my own Paris ruts by NOT staying in the St. Germain/Latin Quarter section on the Left Bank. I'm thrilled to my toes with that choice. Not that [...]
It's Mother's Day today, at least back in the United States (the French will celebrate la Fête des Mères in two weeks). So what I did I do to honor the day in Paris? I took a walk through Père Lachaise cemetery. Not out of some grim impulse to acknowledge [...]
It's not me making that decision -- it was a panel of illustrious judges who convened last month to sample over 150 entries for this year's Grand Prix de la Baguette de Tradition Française de la Ville de Paris. It was just delightful timing that the news of this year's winner came [...]
A delightful oasis in Paris, Square du Temple. My first inclination when I started to plan this long-awaited, extended time in Paris was to narrow my apartment-searching to my old stomping grounds. The Left Bank. The 5th, 6th and 7th arrondissements. As noted in this earlier post, it's where [...]
I spent a few minutes trying to come up with a more clever title for this post but figure it pretty much speaks for itself. Whether you've been there on your honeymoon or for a study-abroad term, if you backpacked-it in a hostel or lived it up at George V, even if [...]
I didn't want to break the spell. When I left Seattle to go to cooking school in France, it was a major adventure, a big step into an unknown future, a dream come true. Belongings that I wasn't taking with me went into long-term storage, since this was to be an open-ended [...]
I love living in Seattle for just a huge range of reasons...... But one that's standing out for me right now is its simple geography. Not that it's on the Puget Sound, or framed by two mountain ranges or in the Cascadia zone that creates a distinctly lush environment for [...]
It strikes me as interesting that I have my liberal arts education in Tacoma, Washington to thank for my introduction to North African cuisine. Indirectly, I suppose, but it was a University of Puget Sound winterim study program of a month in Paris that had me exploring the bustling, colorful [...]
I took about a thousand pictures in this field bursting with yellow blossoms, set against the blue sky accented with white-and-silver clusters of clouds. Okay, I exaggerate. A bit. It was a few dozen perhaps. But I could have kept going if me and my fellow travelers didn't have yet another great [...]