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Last night everyone who was out and about was in a good mood because it wasn’t raining over the Taste of Amherst. Mary recalled how in its earliest days, Amherst’s food festival took place outside each restaurant’s store front….people stopped by for small tastes of each place, with tables set […]
Taiwan became one of the first countries in the world to offer free wifi on a mass scale to its citizens, and now it is extending that to any foreign tourist, also for free, in a move that will gain it a lot of goodwill. As someone who is constantly […]
Here are some of the things I have noticed in France: Random observations from my ten-day trip in Burgundy, Champagne and Nord-Pas-de-Calais in June 2013. I only saw one old man in a beret. Benoit, the 34-year-old guide from Pas-de-Calais, laughed when he said, ‘There, a Frenchman in a beret!” […]
No visit to Champagne would be complete without spending some time in a cave, and there are hundreds to choose from in Reims, the region’s largest city. After touring the spectacular Palace next to the Cathedral, where we saw the original life-size statues created in the 1500s of kings, popes […]
The first thing we saw when we arrived in Lens, France were two huge mountains that look like pyramids with grass growing on them. They were coal heaps, giant piles of tailings left over from some of the many coal mines in this part of northern France that all closed […]
I could feel my heart swell with joy as the train got underway, slowly gaining speed out of Reims bound for Amiens. I had tried to reserve on the TGV, France’s famous 265 mph train, but on a Friday, alas, it was sold out. It must be people like the […]
I met an ambitious, smart and bold young woman tonight who took me to dinner in Reims. She owns her own house in a small village, she’s the assistant to the director of the city’s important tourism board, and she’s traveled by herself to far flung places like Bulgaria, Egypt, […]
In front of a crackling fireplace sat an 87-year-old Champagne maker and his son. We were at Champagne Drappier, in the country village of Urville, where this family has been making fine champagne and other wines since 1808, seven generations of family business. They’re one of the biggest family-owned producers […]
Mustard is a big deal here in Dijon. I met a women today who makes mustard every day, showing tourists and locals how to combine the seeds, some salt, and verjus, the juice of green grapes to make the perfect blend. At La Cuisine de Madeleine, Valerie Grandet showed […]
There is no better way to get to know a country than to spend half a day with a group of tourism officials, especially if it involves sitting at a table with plenty of wine. Today among the things I learned about tourists and France is that there is a […]
I’m in my Dijon hotel room after a long journey starting in Boston and travel by car, TGV train and good old walking. I had some time to hang out at the Gare de Lyon in Paris after I took the Cars Air France bus from Charles de Gaulle Airport […]
There are a lot of things swirling around in my head on this sultry May evening. First, I had to abandon my notion of a totally green barbecue when my plan to use newspaper and small twigs inside a can didn’t light the briquettes right. So I trudged over to […]