Bonjour, Vaison-la-Romain! June 23, 2019

My teeth are stuck together from eating nougat, that oh-so-sweet French confection, via the Middle East, of honey, nuts and egg whites. We hit a nougat factory in Montélimar yesterday and bought it by the kilo. Multiple kilos. I can’t get enough. Got to make sure it makes it safely home. The house in Vaison-la-Romaine…

Love will find a way June 17, 2019

Our feet know the way. For thirty years we have made this pilgrimage. The hair is grayer (or bluer.) The waists are a little thicker. The hotels have changed — though not for the last ten years. Our Paris is not everyone’s but it is deeply familiar and soulful — like coming home to a…

Home Again, Home Again ~~ January 12, 2018

On the plane — January 11 We are almost home after a month’s absence. It’s been an incredible trip — upending my mind, raising my consciousness, lighting up the globe of my imagination so that places that were once just names to me are now pulsing with life. It’s been the kind of transformative trip…

Random Things I Love about Paris ~~ January 7, 2018

It’s our second to last night in Paris, capping off a trip of a lifetime to exotic places I never thought to see. With all that adventure, I planned a little familiar comfort at the end of the trip with a few days in the loveliest city in the world. I wish I could write…

Time Travel ~~ January 1, 2018

Yesterday we said goodbye to Maria Gadnaor, a joyful, funny, sprite of a travel companion. We enjoyed her company so much. She saw us from Eilat, through Petra (Big and Little), to the place where John baptized Jesus and set the forces of Christianity in motion. The baptismal site is such a poignant place. There…

Wadi Rum (The Valley of the Moon) ~~ December 28, 2017

Today was our visit to the ancient city of Petra, and I am sorry to say that I have nothing to say about it since I was laid up in a hotel room with a dodgy knee. [Gorgeous pictures of Petra, taken by Gale: The fall I took skidding in the sand of the Timna…

Wanted: Family Doctor ~~ July 16, 2017

The family doctor is something of an endangered species these days, something that doesn’t get a lot of attention in all the healthcare hullabaloo out there.  You can’t hardly read a newspaper or blog post or listen to a podcast these days without hearing about health care. It’s a gigantic national issue because Obamacare, for…

A vacation, well done ~~ July 10, 2017

This has been the vacation I badly needed. Body healing, spirit renewing, mind clearing. At the beginning I wanted it to go on forever. I felt like I could not get enough of wallowing in luxurious nothing. I felt like that for at least a week.   But a funny thing has happened to me…