Voyages

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Artichokes of Rome

Monday, December 19th, 2011

Wandering around Rome recently, I noticed a few things: 1) Winter in Rome makes Paris seem like a gulag. The sun shines bright and strong (except when it rains), and the temperatures are mild enough for year-round gelato consumption. 2) Romans seem to have infinite reserves of patience for children and non-Italian-speaking tourists (i.e. me). 3) [...]

Rome, actually

Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

I’ll never forget my first visit to Rome, during a sultry summer weekend almost seven years ago. I’m not sure what disappointed me most: the masses of tourists crowding the monuments, or the horrible food I ate at almost every turn. I hadn’t done my homework , you see, hadn’t researched any good addresses. And [...]

Carte postale: Rome

Monday, December 12th, 2011

Lunch at a nondescript tavola calda. Nothing fancy, and yet unforgettable. P.S. I’m still digging out from my trip, but I’ll be back with a longer post soon!

Cheese in St-Etienne and environs

Monday, December 5th, 2011

I’ve been traveling so much this fall, I can scarcely download the photos from my camera before I’m packing my bags once again. As a result, these pictures from St-Etienne — about 40 miles southwest of Lyon, in the Rhône-Alpes region — are a few weeks old and the gentle sunshine that diffuses them seems [...]

Alsace

Tuesday, November 15th, 2011

Is everyone bilingual in Alsace? On a recent trip there, I heard shopkeepers and restaurant owners switching between French and the local dialect, Alsacian, snapping from one to the other without batting an umlaut. Alsacian is etymologically close to Swiss German — I heard lots of ja, ja, ja, mixed with the occasional ça va [...]

Fall foliage in Burgundy

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

Last week I went to Burgundy for a few days. Though the purpose of my trip was to eat research boeuf Bourguignon — I’m saving tales of wine-braised beef, garlicky snails, and liquid Epoisses cheese for a chapter in my new book – I also spent a lot of time driving (over 620 miles in four days!) and marveling [...]

Strudel show

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

When I went to Vienna last November, I loved eating apple strudel at the old-fashioned tearoom, Demel. At the time, I had no idea of the skill and labor involved in creating the sweet pastry. The word strudel, which means “whirlpool” or “eddy” in German, refers to the swirl of thin dough wrapped around a [...]

Cheese fondue canicule

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

Salut, mes amis! I’m excited today to share part two of our vacation photos: Annecy and the French Alps. Don’t those names conjure up cool air and fresh mountain breezes? Alas, we arrived in the midst of a canicule — that is, a heat wave — which draped the town in a swathe of stickiness. But [...]

Provence and the Basses-Alpes

Monday, August 29th, 2011

   Bonjour, mes amis! We got back from our vacation a few days ago and I’m still glowing from the Provence sun and scratching my mosquito bites. It was a bright and busy two weeks, filled with lovely friends, delicious food (including homemade melon ice cream — yum!), and a couple of road trips in [...]

Summer holidays

Thursday, August 11th, 2011

It has been my favorite kind of summer this year in Paris — cool and grey and drizzly with flashes of warmth and bright sun. Even though I love it (I know, I’m weird) I’m ready for a blast of dry heat, lazy afternoons by the pool, and the juice of a nectarine trickling down [...]

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