The Word Of The Day Is …

There’s something luminous about France, and I don’t know that I’ve really understood it until now, and I’m still not entirely certain that I do. I’ve heard about it before, but didn’t quite have a grasp of it. Maybe it’s in the angle of the sun and the way it refracts through the lens of […]

There Really Is Food In Lyon

They say Lyon is the gastronomic capital of France, whoever “they” are. And they might be right. For one, there are food vending machines everywhere. These were in the subway. Every station seems to have at least three or four of the contraptions. On some level, the ubiquity of the these devices with their industrial, […]

I Didn’t Expect to Find a Staircase There

The clouds hung low and baleful in the firmament as we crossed the river Saône to the Vieux Lyon, the old neighborhood that lies just to the west of the river. I looked up at the preternaturally luminous churches of St. Jean and Notre Dame, standing in stark contrast to those clouds, and wondered if […]

Sometimes I Manage to Find an Entire Country Closed For The Day

We strolled along the footbridge as the waters of the Saône swooshed by below, serenaded by the wind running its invisible bowstrings across the great twisted steel cables, sounding a low pitched hum that reverberated through the railing and into my fingertips. Across the river is the old city, and above us stands the Notre […]

A Trip Deferred

If years ago you would have told me that I would travel to 24 other countries before visiting France, I would have been dubious, not just of the overall number, but of the sequence. Somehow, however, that’s how things have worked out, and now this is country number 25, and my fifth new country to […]

Vietnam: Final Musings From The Journey Home

I’m on my way home now, suspended somewhere over the Pacific as I write this. And what a trip this has been. Sometimes these wrap-up posts (when I write them) are compilations of tips and minor stories, but this one is more ruminative. I’m trying to assemble my thoughts and feelings into something coherent, and […]