It’s not exactly Everest, but it is a hike from the bottom of Butte Montmartre to the top, where the Sacre-Coeur Basilica was built. Most tourists, including this one, tend to believe Sacre-Coeur is old. Like Notre Dame. But it is not. Notre Dame was begun in 1163 and completed in 1345. Sacre-Coeur was started […]

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Sometimes we forget how much our living space says about us. Our furniture. Our appliances. The art on the walls and the knick-knacks on the tables. The size of our television. What is present, in our digs, and what is absent. And I can say, without hesitation, that our home in France this week is […]

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All the time spent in Paris … and it is hard to recall more than one day spent in the 18th arrondissement. A visit to Sacre-Coeur. A very long time ago. However, we are staying a week in the 18th this time around, and it’s not quite like the areas of Paris with which we […]

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In some ways, it was a well-planned fete. A concept years in the making. Guest list resolved. Date and time chosen months ahead. Place identified. Champ de Mars, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Near the dirt allee named Thomy-Thierry. The trouble with that?

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In 1975, during a roundtrip tour of the U.S. — from sea to shining sea (to shining sea) — my brother and I pulled into Gettysburg late one evening. We found a motel that seemed tidy and inexpensive enough, and were soon asleep in our ground-floor room. When we woke the next morning, one of […]

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We were going to Italy, from Abu Dhabi, to celebrate a significant birthday, and it seemed a perfect occasion to invite some of those near and dear to us to a sort of moveable feast. In Italy. It began in Florence, moved to Siena for Il Palio and since Saturday night has continued at Villa […]

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We have been joined in San Gimignano by an Italian couple and their two young children. After a dinner (barbecued sausages and a half-dozen skewers of meat and peppers) and some very nice wine our visitors brought us, we sat down in the living room to talk about life in the UAE … and it […]

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Three of us decided to take a walk through the rolling countryside surrounding San Gimignano. The area practically calls out for a hike. Lots of up and down, but most of it not really intense, and it generally stays off paved roads — in favor of dirt tracks or rutted secondary roads leading into dense […]

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Speaking generally, Italy is a country where failure to eat what is put in front of you is often met with disappointment. Sometimes the disappointment is internalized and then becomes a bit aggressive. “You don’t like it?” (Disappointed.) Why not?” (Vaguely accusatory.) While in Florence, at a perfectly adequate restaurant, I did not feel like […]

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The world seems to be shrinking, day by day. More of it seems within reach than ever before. But plenty of nooks and crannies of human existence remain outside our body of knowledge. For instance, the Italian city of San Gimignano.

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