November 6th, 2011 | General, Travel
In 1917, Canadian troops, with extraordinary valor and grotesque losses, took ground held by Germans since 1914. Vimy is now an enormous park; the terrain, grassy and green, retains the topography created by shellfire and the craters left my mines exploded in tunnels...
November 4th, 2011 | General, Travel
What do you do with an old concrete building and barren land in the industrial outskirts of a gracious grande-dame of a city like Arras? Turn it into a giant and sneakily educational playground, of course! And what a playground Cité Nature is! The conversion...
November 3rd, 2011 | General, Travel
The skies wept over Ypres and Passchendaele. This was the place that my Dear One felt most drawn to. On the drive up, he read me key passages from Leon Wolff’s In Flanders Fields. I had spent little time studying that corner of the Front. I had read The Danger Tree...
November 2nd, 2011 | General, Travel
Serena our GPS seems to have an affection for countryside and tiny rural lanes. When departing Nancy, for instance, we found ourselves turning abruptly off what seemed like a sensible main road, twisting through a tiny village and up a steep track through a forest of...
October 31st, 2011 | General, Travel
What is not to love about this set of light-filled rooms on the second floor, with their old beams and serene quiet. The occasional vehicle rumbles by on the street beyond the kitchen. From the other side horses nicker conversationally. Gîte Les Tilleuls, “Lime...
October 30th, 2011 | General, Travel
The best laid plans may go awry but small inconveniences, what the French road system terms déviances, provide marvelous surprise. We could not have planned such adventures; we did not know that these were things we would want to do; we were in general completely...
