Bonjour à tous de France! Yes, I’m currently walking and eating my way around beautiful France with my sister, Laura. We’ve talked about taking this trip for years, and since we were both celebrating BIG birthdays this September (65 and 70; I’ll let you guess whose birthday is whose), we thought this was finally the time to go.
Our trip in France started with Paris, bien sûr, in a lovely Airbnb in the 10th arrondissement, where we amused ourselves by watching the goings-on in the building across the street, à la Rear Window:
But we also visited some of the sites, including a boat trip down the Seine River, where we had fabulous views of the Tour Eiffel as well as the replica of Lady Liberty (much smaller than the original), gifted to France by the US to celebrate the centennial of the French revolution.
And we climbed up to Montmartre to see the incredible Basilica of Sacré-Coeur, pictured here with a vintage “deux chevaux” (two horses/2 CV) Citroën in the foreground.
We were excited to visit the restored Notre Dame, which had been so severely damaged by fire back in 2019. After having seen its darkened-by-age-and-smoke inside so many times in the past, I was astounded by how light and airy it was after the cleaning and restoration.
And of course I had to visit the famous bookstore, Shakespeare & Co., whose original owner, Sylvia Beach, was brave enough to publish James Joyce’s Ulysses, notwithstanding the censors trying to prevent it from happening.
One day we went to an exhibit of Leandro Erlich’s trompe l’oeil pieces at the Grand Palais–good fun!
Next it was on to Lyon, to my mind, the gastronomical center of the universe, where we dined on steak-frites with shallot-wine sauce and pike quenelles in lobster-cream sauce at Paul Bocuse’s brasserie, Le Nord. Heavenly!
After several days in Lyon, we continued south to Aix-en-Provence, where we enjoyed apéros at outdoor cafés, and where we celebrated our official birthdays, which are one day apart. That’s us in our birthday finest, enjoying a before-dinner cocktail. How lovely to sit in the early evening setting sun, sipping a delicious beverage and watching the world go by!
From Aix, we took a one-day trip down to Marseille (where my protagonist Valerie Corbin’s grand-père is from), and went on a cruise of the coastline around Marseille out of its famous vieux port (old port), which holds some 3,000 boats.
And of course we had to have some pastis à la Marseillaise, while there!
We’re now back in Paris again, and this is the view from our 6th-floor apartment here. It’s going to be hard to return to my real life again…
Readers: Do you have a favorite place to travel?
