Tag: France
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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