Tag Archives: France

My travel choices are often a bit haphazard: as much reliant on timing and opportunity as they are on interest and desire. I’ve found it doesn’t really matter: wherever I go, there are interesting things to see and learn, and surprising connections to my own life-so-far. Take Toulouse, in Occitania, in the south of France. […]

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I love the old cobbled cities of Europe, and the historical stories they tell. I spent some of my school years living in the French-speaking parts of Eastern Canada where the historical root and ties were to France. When I was studying the history of the early European explorers and settlers in Canada, their names […]

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Fog! About an hour into our trip south across the English Chanel from the Bailiwick of Jersey to Brittany, France, everything outside the ferry windows disappeared. It didn’t seem an auspicious start to our day trip to Saint-Malo, the mediaeval walled city of explorers, privateers, and pirates. But, just like magic, dolphins appeared – leaping and diving along-side the boat […]

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It’s autumn in Australia at the moment, which makes me think of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. Defies logic, I know, but there is something about the freshness of the air this change-of-season that has me humming: “I love Paris in the springtime…” and thinking of my last time in France, back in the spring […]

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There is something poignant about the end of an adventure. It was cold on the morning of our last day on the Cathar trail. The pale almost-full Easter moon hung low in the dark sky behind the pog (rock) as we trudged from our accommodation in Cazals d’en Dessus back up the hill to the village […]

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