Travel

There are two places in this world—at least so far—that touch my soul in a way few others ever have: Point Reyes, in West Marin, California, and Provincetown, Massachusetts. They could hardly be farther apart geographically, yet they share something difficult to define. They are places I find myself returning to again and again because of their remarkable sense of place, their manageable size, their quirky histories, and the colorful characters who give them life. They are co

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

As a history buff, and both an Anglophile and a Francophile, World War II has always held a particular fascination for me. At the center of that history—and arguably the turning point of the entire war—stands D-Day. So when a friend asked me where they should spend five days in France, I suggested Normandy without hesitation. Little did I know I would be arriving during one of France’s major heat waves. Fortunately, while Paris and much of southern France were approaching 100