After some time melting my sins away in the dry sauna of our Saint Nectaire hotel, I shocked my senses awake with an ice-cold shower before suiting up in sweater, coat and Uggs and heading out again for dinner. We had made a reservation at L’Auberge de l’Âne, a charming, rustic tavern-type restaurant at an…
We rolled into Saint Nectaire at 2:00 a.m. at 40 km/h in a snow-white Fiat 500 with no chain on the tires, careful not to brake on the patchwork of slush and black ice that greeted us on the road. A surprise destination, I knew nothing about the Auvergne region (except that it was half-way between…
A very rainy hour-and-a-half drive up along the coast in a rented cherry-red Fiat 500 brought us to La Rochelle, the picture-perfect capital of Charente Maritime. Two solid months of non-stop rain and all of the emotional ups and downs that come with such weather had ignited our cabin fever to the point where we…
Arriving just in time for our Saturday night reservation at El Nacional, I was already quite certain I’d be in for a great piece of meat – an entraña, a vacio or costilleras imported from Argentina or Uruguay, some chimichurri tapped gently on, nothing on the side. I had heard rumors that they serve Salta-style…
There had been a lot going on in the month of October with a trip to Barcelona, getting back to work, back to school, going to Rioja with school, and the next day leaving to Boston with a 22-hour layover in Lisbon. Somewhere in the middle of all that I met a friend from work…
I didn’t know Provence too well before embarking on a road trip there recently with a good friend of mine. We – well, she (I still don’t have a license) – drove from Montpellier to Avignon to Château Sainte Roseline winery, then to the coastal city of Sainte Martine and back to our rural stay…
A quick walk around the tourism office of Cabourg gave us the idea for our next stop in Normandy. We walked down to the grand casino to photograph the blue-and-white beach huts for which this part of France is so famous, and visited the local market to oggle at artisanal apple ciders and Pommeau Normandie.…
