Buon giorno! Les & I have just returned from a lovely 4 days in Tuscany. But before leaving France, we took time to visit a small French town called Ceret, near the Spanish border. It's a lovely little town made famous first by Picasso, then other artists, as they summered & worked there. See our small album called "Ceret, France" for pictures. We even managed to buy 4 lovely prints to brighten up our walls. From there, we headed to Girona, Spain, to ...

Salut, tout le monde! We have arrived in our other world! Les & I left Charleston, our normal world, on June 7, to head for a week in Chicago with family & friends. (For recent photos of our families, see "A Wild Week in Chicago, June '14".) We left Chicago on Monday, June 16, & arrived in Paris on Tuesday to discover that the French rail system is on strike. Everybody who had a paid reservation was shifted to the ONE & ONLY train leaving the ai...

Hello Everybody! Happy End of Summer. Week 10, and Boo-hoo!, our final full week in Languedoc came & went. We spent it tying up the loose ends: visiting places we'd been before & wanted to revisit, & doing one last art exposition. Here are the highlights: Charles Trenet in Narbonne We love Narbonne--it's an old Roman city (in fact the Via Domitia runs right through the center of town) with many museums & the lovely markets (inside & outside...

Here we are, Week 9--one more week to go before "Re-entry"! Can't believe it! We've just finished a lovely week, full of new experiences & old friends. Can't beat it! Thursday, August 15 was "La Fete de La Vierge", a holy day that's also a national holiday, & serves as the official reminder that summer is almost over in France. Although this holiday floats with the date, it is very similar to Labor Day weekend for the States, where families gather for ba...

Salut tout le monde! It's hard to believe we just finished week 8 here! Here are the highlights: Musique a la espagnol! Responding to an article in Tuesday's "Midi Libre", our local newspaper, Les & I headed to a nearby town, Murviel-les-Beziers, to a "nuit espagnole" at the Chateau de Coujan, a lovely vineyard. The program was tapas (oysters & mussels), wine (they gave you a glass, you bought a bottle), and Spanish music performed by La Gata Negra. Ca...