This is one of those “I wish I had thought of that!” situations. Well, aside from the fact that I am not a cartoonist, and all. Clark Kent quits the Daily Planet is the headline on the Jim Romenesko site, and includes the outline of an actual edition of the DC Comic.

[Read more →]

We hit Barcelona like a bunch of college kids on spring break. Like Russian sailors on shore leave. Had we enough time, we all would have gotten tattoos and probably ended up in jail. (OK, it was more like “seasoned travelers … very seasoned travelers … straggle back into downtown Barcelona the night before the […]

[Read more →]

Our last day in Nizas, this little town in the rollings hills of the Herault. It isn’t paradise, but it’s somewhere in the vicinity. Or so it seems to a couple of visitors from the desert. The color green everywhere, The Grape (above) cultivated all around us, astonishingly good meals at unknown restaurants (like the […]

[Read more →]

  OK, so the wind is a problem, here in the Herault. The oysters are not a problem. They are a blessing. A gift of nature. Find a map of the region, and note how close we are to the etangs — areas of sea water enclosed (or nearly so) by land. So, when we […]

[Read more →]

Actually, we might have titled this the problem in Languedoc. Le Vent. The wind. This is one of those places in the world where you should never make a decision about buying (or even renting) a home until you go through a day or three of wind howling from (mostly) the west. I am reminded […]

[Read more →]

Editor’s note: A guest post by our resident food critic. We had a lovely meal in Pezenas, the next semi-big town over, here in the Languedoc. It wasn’t our first visit to this restaurant, and it’s not likely to be our last.

[Read more →]

Nizas is unique to its residents, no doubt, but to the North American visitor, via the UAE, it has a certain charming sameness as do hundreds (thousands?) of other little towns in the Languedoc. Let’s take a walk around, starting at the village church.

[Read more →]

Every little town in this country has one. Every little town. And they are both fascinating and heart-rending. The memorials to the French dead in World War I. A conflagration that killed 1.4 million French soldiers, most of them in the prime of their lives, and wounded 4.3 million more. World War II was more […]

[Read more →]

Now I know what senior citizens in France do on weekends. They visit the nearest brocante. A brocante is a very French event … more than a garage sale, far less than an antique sale. Basically, it’s a bunch of people who bring whatever old stuff they had in the attic, or bought at an […]

[Read more →]

Six of us are hanging out in an amazing house in the obscure, little French village of Nizas. Here is the link to where we are. And the amazing thing about it?

[Read more →]