France for Two Months

I board a packed, hot TGV from Strasbourg to Paris Gare de l’Est. It’s a close connection from Colmar, so

On the train from Italy to Switzerland, the sound of surrounding speech changes from lilting Italian to the brushing swish

The train stops. It’s like no station you have ever seen. It’s in a tunnel with a silver rounded top

I wake before the sun when all is quiet and I can work, like my great grandmother did, and like

I don’t know why I chose French. Spanish was certainly the more predominant language in school and the German teacher

Just outside of Nice, the train barrels into a long stretch of underground tunnel and emerges at the Villefranche-sur-mer station.

Note to self: if you’re on a trail and you don’t have a solid plan, go back, go back.  On

After a fifty-minute walk from the train station in the old sea city of Sète to the quiet Hotel Venezia

Something about the double-walled, turreted city on a hill, Carcassonne, has always captured my imagination, so in Avignon I board a