Tag: France
-
AN APPARITION IN LOURDES
In 1858, 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous and her sister and friend were out collecting firewood outside the village of Lourdes in the French Pyrenees. They wandered into a grotto where they claim a “a tiny maiden” wearing a flowing white robe spoke to them. The tiny maiden appeared 18 times that year in the area and during one visit declared to Bernadette “que soy era immaculada concepciou” – I am the Immaculate Conception. In 1862, the local bishop endorsed the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lourdes and in February 1876,…
-
THE LASHERMES OF VACQUIÈRES
The second principal destination of our Northern Hemisphere Friends and Family tour was Vacquières, a village of no more than 600 people just north of Montpelier, France. Two long-time residents are our friends from our Syrian Football Night Dinners, Philippe and Catherine Lashermes. Philippe and Catherine left Syria in 1992 and after a short stint in Cote d’Ivoire they bought an old farm home in a village and fixed it up and had three children along the way. Philippe commutes to work in Montpelier as an agricultural researcher by ebike. We…
-
MEANDERING ALONG THE RIVIERA
I don’t have the patience to read travel guides and figure out what to see and where to go. Padma and I just drive and discover along the way. There are countless cute and picturesque seaside villages along the Riviera. How do you choose where to stay? I let booking.com do it for me. I just brought up the map and searched for hotels that matched our criteria. I found one in Menton, France … which is really more Italian than French. As I studied our approach to Menton, I saw…
-
ANOTHER CHATEAU
There are about 1000 chateaux in France’s Loire Valley. Padma and I saw one and a half. That’s enough. Been there. Done that. We started our drive through the Loire with a stop at Amboise and really enjoyed walking through the chateau and the gardens and courtyards. Then we travelled south to the River Cher to Château de Chenonceau, which is labelled as ‘if you only visit one chateau, then visit Chenonceau’. We paid our 15 euros to get in but, give our fear of COVID, just couldn’t muster the courage…
-
ALSACE. GERMAN OR FRENCH?
One of the few things I remember from high school history is the story of Alsace-Lorraine. It’s a region in present-day eastern France that has been claimed by both France and Germany and as a result has changed hands several times over the past two centuries. Traditionally the people of the region speak a dialect of German known as Alsatian, so Germany felt it belonged to them. But France figured borders should be determined by natural features so they staked claim to the land east of the Vosges Mountains to the…
-
MY COUSIN MARY AT THE D’ORSAY
I will be honest. I had never heard of the American Impressionist Mary Cassatt until I discovered we were cousins. Turns out Mary and I descend from Louis DuBois, a French Huguenot who fled persecution in his home country. Louis arrived in present day upper state New York in 1661 and established a community of like-minded individuals. Mary and I are connect via his son, Jacob DuBois, so that makes us fifth cousins, 3x removed. Padma and I were in Paris to move Joseph out of his sixth floor flat. We…
-
THE BATTLE OF VERDUN – A CENTURY LATER
As we turn our attention this weekend to the centenary of the signing of the armistice to end World War I, I look back at a visit that Padma, Xander, Joseph and I took this summer to a battlefield in France which proved to be the ultimate test of human endurance. The Battle of Verdun was fought for 303 days from February to December 1916. It was the largest and longest battle of the First World War on the Western Front between the German and French armies. Estimates vary but range…
-
A PAIR OF DAYS IN PARIS
DAY 31 – Paris We can’t have a Facebook travel journal and not have the cliche picture of us at the Eiffel Tower. So here is our contribution. The weather forecast called for rain during the entire time of our stay but we woke up on Friday to find a bit of blue sky so we dashed out of our hotel and walked 3 minutes (yes, we’re that close) to the Tower. I got to the second platform and that was as far as I could go. I am terrified of…
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.