2026

One of the images most people associate with Provence is endless fields of brilliant purple lavender stretching toward the horizon beneath impossibly blue skies. Those photographs are beautiful, but they also create the impression that you simply drive into Provence and lavender magically appears around every bend. The reality is a little more complicated—and, in many ways, much more rewarding. As I have written in several of my other travel blogs, one of my favorite ways to

In an earlier blog, I wrote at length about my favorite things to see and do in Avignon, one of my favorite cities in France. On a recent return visit, however, I happened to arrive during the famous Festival d’Avignon and discovered an entirely different side of the city, along with several wonderful places I had somehow missed before. While I had certainly heard of the Festival d’Avignon, nothing prepared me for the sheer scale of it. Every July, this already beautiful medi

One of the greatest pleasures of travel, at least for me, is making connections. Not simply between places, but between people, ideas, and moments in history that at first seem entirely unrelated. A small museum visited one year suddenly explains a painting encountered in another city. A forgotten collector helps me understand an artist I have admired for decades. A chance exhibition ties everything together. Avignon has become one of those places for me. Most visitors come f