Rock Music, a Tiny Camper, and the Best Lunch in Brittany

France  |  Download Music Festival + Brittany road trip  |  June 2018 

1- Twenty Years, One Ring Per Five: Our Anniversary on the French Riviera

Twenty Years

Twenty years of marriage is one of those milestones that sounds significant even before you start trying to describe what it actually means. It's not just time. It's the accumulated weight of every decision made together, every trip packed for, every dinner cooked, every inside joke that wouldn't make sense to anyone else on the planet.

We decided to celebrate in France (of course we did). It’s a country that changed us both, and we went all in: a road trip through the south, ending in Paris, two weeks total. We had a French rap playlist queued up before the wheels hit the tarmac. We landed, picked up our rental car and hit the open road…credit card at the ready for the million toll stops we knew were on the way.

Dijon: Grey Poupon and a Good Night

First stop was Dijon, overnight on our way south, and yes, we absolutely leaned into the Grey Poupon reference. We had to. The town itself is charming in that very French way where the architecture does most of the work and you just have to show up and walk around appreciating it. A nice meal, a comfortable night, and then south toward the Mediterranean.

We had a wonderful dinner dining on chicken with fresh morel mushrooms that was unbelievably perfect and then wandering through the small streets as the sun went down. It’s a town that we would return to anytime we have the possibility.

Cassis: The Winemaker, the Wine Bar, and the Ring

Cassis sits on the Mediterranean east of Marseille, and if you've never heard of it, that's honestly part of its charm. It's not famous the way Nice or Cannes is famous. It's just deeply, quietly beautiful, with turquoise water and limestone cliffs and a small harbor where fishing boats still go out in the morning.

We were there for two days, and Uncle Larry had done us an enormous favor by pointing us toward Clos Ste Magdeleine, a winery considered one of the most beautiful vineyards in the world. The family still lives in the main house on the property, so you can't wander the whole estate, but what you can see of it is extraordinary. The sea visible through the vines. The kind of view that makes you understand immediately why someone chose this exact piece of ground to plant something permanent.

The people were so lovely. They walked us to a spot with a view of the sea, unhurried and genuinely warm, the way small family wineries often are when they're not performing hospitality but just actually being hospitable.

Then there was the wine bar.

We found a spot in town where the owner was what I can only describe as unreservedly wonderful. He gave us free pours. He gave us hugs. Every time we came back, which was more than once, he treated us like people he'd known for years. That kind of spontaneous human warmth is exactly why we travel.

Cassis is just a wonderful, quitter seaside stop where you could laze away the days and just relax. An enjoyable stay to say the least.

Gordes: The Hilltop Town That Earns Every Cliché

We made a day trip to Gordes, which is one of those Provençal hilltop villages that shows up on every 'most beautiful villages in France' list and still manages to exceed the expectations that list creates. The town is built into the rock. The stone buildings rise out of the limestone as if they grew there organically rather than being placed by human hands. The light in the late afternoon does things I don't have adequate language for.

We drove into the heart of the town and popped in and out of shops, took pictures, and then found a wonderful little café with excellent meringues, cocktails, and a nice view to boot. The sun was out and it was a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

Eze and the Château Eza: Our Splurge Moment

We made the short drive to Eze next, and I want to be careful about how I say this because I don't want to oversell it and I don't think I can undersell it: the view from Eze literally took my breath away when we arrived. I felt emotional. I wasn't expecting to feel emotional. But there it was.

Eze is a medieval village perched on a rocky peak above the Mediterranean, about 400 meters up, and from certain angles it looks like it shouldn't be physically possible that a village exists there. The sea below is that particular impossible shade of blue that the Mediterranean does in summer, and the whole picture is just too much to absorb at once.

Château Eza was our splurge hotel and room for this trip, and we committed to it completely. We sat in the on-deck jacuzzi with wine and champagne and looked out at the sea and tried very hard to absorb everything. We had a tasting menu for dinner that we watched unfold as the sun set over the Mediterranean.

I feel a wee bit like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous showing up in a place like that, but I also feel like 20 years of marriage and a lifetime of traveling as real working people earns you an occasional jacuzzi above the Mediterranean. We earned it.

Monaco: Because It Was 20 Minutes Away

We had never thought seriously about visiting Monaco, but when you're in Eze and Monaco is literally 20 minutes down the coast, the question becomes less 'should we go' and more 'why wouldn't we.' So we went.

It is exactly what you think it is. Incomprehensible concentrations of wealth made very visible in the form of yachts and sports cars that cost more than most people's houses. The casino sits there like it knows exactly what it is. It's a genuinely strange place to spend a few hours and I'm glad we did it, but I don't think Monaco is on our 'can't wait to go back' list.

Vienne: The Perfect Last Night on the Road

Our last night of the road trip before Paris was in Vienne, about halfway between Eze and the capital. Matt found an apartment on a couple's property with a view of the city, which is exactly the kind of accommodation discovery that makes you feel like you're actually living somewhere rather than just passing through it.

Fruits de mer for dinner. Which is to say: a glorious, cold platter of everything the sea has to offer, with good bread and butter and wine, the way the French do it, leisurely and completely unpretentious about the fact that you're eating very well.

Then we were on our way back to our travel heart…Paris.

2 - A Padlock on the Louvre and Twenty Years in the City of Light

The First Thing I Do in Paris

The first thing I do when I arrive in Paris is light a candle for my Dad. Every time. It's not a complicated ritual or a formal one. It's just something I do because my father was the person who first brought me to Paris, 27 years ago now, and I've been coming back ever since. He gave me this city, he gave me the gift of seeing a world outside of the tiny bubble I grew up in, he gave me that feeling…the feeling that I need to leave my hometown, try new things, experience new cultures, in order to grow. Lighting a candle is the least I can do.

Notre Dame has always been where I do it.

Notre Dame is still under construction. It has been since the fire in 2019, and it will be for some time yet. The scaffolding surrounds it, the cathedral is closed to visitors, and if you're someone who has stood inside that building and felt what it does to you, the sight of it wrapped in construction equipment is its own particular kind of sadness.

I couldn't light my candle there. So I found Église Saint-Merry, just a short walk away in the Marais, and I lit it there instead.

I stood in the quiet of that church, lit the candle, and said thank you to my father for changing the course of my life by bringing me here the first time. Some moments on a trip are private ones. This was one of those.

Our Paris, Revisited

We stayed in an Airbnb with a rooftop view of Paris, which is the right way to arrive in a city you've been to before. Not a hotel lobby, not a view of an alley. A rooftop, with the city spread out around you, lit up in the evening in that particular golden way Paris manages even when it's being completely ordinary about it.

We walked to Notre Dame our first evening, not to go in (impossible) but to see it, to check in on it. The construction is jarring and also somehow moving, evidence of a place so important to so many people that the whole world decided collectively that it had to be brought back. We stumbled upon a great little restaurant know for its wood-fired rotisserie chicken and had a nice meal before coming “home” to the rooftop.

Tuesday: Wine, Cheese, and a Full Day of Favorites

We started Tuesday with a French wine class paired with regional cheeses, which is an activity I will recommend to anyone visiting Paris without qualification or hesitation. You learn things. You drink good wine at an hour that would seem unreasonable at home and seems completely reasonable in France. You eat cheese that reminds you why the French are the way they are about cheese. It's an excellent morning.

Then we walked. We always walk Paris. Les Invalides, with Napoleon's tomb in that enormous gold-domed cathedral that somehow manages to be less about hubris and more about genuine grandeur in person. The Eiffel Tower, which I know sounds like the obvious tourist thing and is the obvious tourist thing and is still worth doing every single time because it's the Eiffel Tower and it never stops being improbable.

Musée Rodin. If you haven't been, it's not what you expect. The sculptures are inside but the gardens are where Rodin really gets you, The Thinker sitting outdoors with the gardens spreading around it, Burghers of Calais in the open air. It's a museum you can actually breathe in.

Wednesday: The Unicorn Tapestries, Montmartre, and a Jazz Club

Wednesday was one of those Paris days that strings together so many good things it stops feeling real.

We went back to Musée de Cluny for the Unicorn Tapestries, which is one of our favorite things in the city. They're housed in their own dedicated room in the medieval museum, six tapestries depicting a unicorn and a noblewoman in an allegorical setting that art historians have been arguing about for centuries. The colors shouldn't still be that vivid after 500-plus years. They are. You walk into that room and something about it quiets you down immediately.

Then Montmartre. Up to Sacré-Coeur, which earns its reputation from the outside even if the inside is less remarkable, and over to Place du Tertre, where artists have been selling their work for decades. We ended up buying another painting. This has become something of a pattern when we visit Paris and I don't intend to stop.

We wandered St. Germain-des-Prés, more fruits de mer, and then, through whatever combination of instinct and luck that good travel days sometimes produce, we found a jazz club.

I don't mean we looked one up. I mean we turned a corner and there it was, warm light coming through the windows, music audible from outside, and we went in. Great music and a great dinner in the same room. Some of the best nights in Paris happen this way.

Thursday: Rain, the Louvre, and a Lock on a Bridge

Our last full day in Paris started rainy, which is fine. Paris in the rain is still Paris. We waited it out, and when it cleared late afternoon we headed to the Louvre courtyard, one of our favorite outdoor spots in the city.

Two musicians were playing. We stood and listened for a long time. I don't know who they were or what they played specifically. I know the light was good and the Louvre pyramid was doing its thing behind them and it was one of those unplanned perfect moments that Paris produces with annoying regularity.

Then we put a lock on a bridge for our twentieth anniversary.

The Pont des Arts doesn't do the Locks of Love anymore officially, the weight of all those padlocks was genuinely becoming a structural concern, but there are still places along the Seine where you can add yours, and we did. Twenty years. One lock. It felt right to do it in the city where we've returned more than any other, the city my father gave me, the city Matt and I have made our own over two decades of coming back.

We wandered until it was time to leave. That's the only way to end a Paris trip. No agenda, no final destination, just more streets and light and the particular feeling of a city you love that you're not quite ready to say goodbye to yet.

Au revoir, France. You were, as always, everything.

Back home, I made Julia Child's Sole Meunière two nights running and then Chicken with Morel mushrooms. It's the only reasonable response to coming home from two weeks in France and being expected to cook for yourself.

Beyond Paris: Loire Chateaux, Mont St Michel, and Julia Child's Table

France  |  Loire Valley + Mont St Michel + Normandy 

Getting the rental car out of Paris on day six of the 2013 trip involved Matt pulling up from the train station and announcing, "That was fun. I already pissed off a motorcycle and I have no idea why." I was immediately assigned one job: do not make any reactions. This is how we drive out of Paris together.

Once we were on the highway toward the Loire Valley it was fine. France has lovely toll roads that cost a completely unlovely amount. Fourteen euros for one hour on one freeway. We accepted this as the price of seeing Chenonceau.

The Loire Valley is not what you imagine when you imagine the Loire Valley, meaning the chateaux are not clustered together like a fairy tale theme park. They're spread out by hours of driving, everything closes at five, and you can realistically only see two in a day. We saw Chambord first because it's the one everyone says is best. The exterior is breathtaking, genuinely breathtaking: 440 rooms, 282 fireplaces, 84 staircases, construction started in 1519. Inside it's almost completely empty, cavernous and freezing because it would take an entire forest of wood to heat the place, which explains why no one actually lived there for very long.

Lunch at the Chambord cafe was the worst meal we had in France. Possibly one of the worst meals of our lives. The coq au vin I ordered was fine. Matt ordered something with ham and white sauce and mushrooms and received what appeared to be a burnt frozen pizza baguette with meatballs. We left as fast as politely possible.

Chenonceau was everything Chambord promised to be. Original furnishings still inside, the most incredible flower arrangements and tablescapes throughout for Easter, the kitchen intact and full of atmosphere, the gallery stretching across the water. Built in the 1400s. Beautiful in a way that felt lived-in rather than staged.

This is also when I got sick. As I do, apparently, on vacations. A fever that hit hard by the time we reached our hotel in Amboise. I went directly to sleep. No dinner. Matt walked around town alone. I felt terrible about the whole evening and also just plain felt terrible. I had the best intentions of soldiering through.

Mont St Michel helped. We drove three and a half hours the next morning with me mostly sleeping and feeling like someone was banging on the inside of my skull. Mont St Michel has been there since 460 AD and seeing it appear in the distance as we approached was worth every foggy minute of the drive. It stands out there all by itself looking simultaneously ancient and impossible. Cars are not allowed anywhere near it. You park far away and take a bus to the base, then walk.

Everything at Mont St Michel is uphill and stairs. We made it to the abbey at the top, which is much larger than expected and genuinely impressive. The views out from the top are real. We came back down through the souvenir shops, looked at our watches, and realized we had seen the entire island in under three hours. I then slept for most of the afternoon, which my body needed more than any abbey.

Dinner at the hotel was a fixed menu that had lobster bisque as a starter, which sounds lovely and arrived with scallops in it, which I did not want and which didn't help my already uncertain stomach. The entrees were not worth describing. Dessert was sorbet and a crepe, which were fine. The beds, however, were extremely comfortable.

The Normandy section of this trip was Matt's territory. He had done his research thoroughly. We started at the Dead Man's Corner Museum in Carentan, which had some excellent Band of Brothers-related displays. Then north to a German Bunker Museum at the Sword Beach area where we toured all four floors of a fortified bunker, command center, communications room, and all. The Germans occupied France for four years before D-Day and what they built along that coastline during those four years is genuinely staggering: power, plumbing, air circulation systems, thick concrete everywhere. We stopped for food at the only available option, which was a French McDonalds, which operates on kiosks and serves specialty burgers with Camembert and goat cheese toppings that you will never see in America.

Our little apartment La Maison Matelot was darling. Matt had found it while researching the area. Three units in one building, all charming, all uniquely decorated. We picked the ground floor one specifically because it had a claw foot bathtub and we were not wrong about that decision. The apartment manager gave us dinner recommendations and we headed out to see a German cemetery and a calvados producer before the dreaded 5pm closing. The German cemetery was actually quite beautiful, sun on the grass, rows of dark crosses, very different in tone from the American cemetery we'd see the next day.

And then a bird pooped directly on my head. I had been finally feeling better, out in the Normandy sunshine, and a bird made its announcement from above. Matt cleaned it off while laughing the entire time. This is marriage.

The calvados producer was interesting but the product itself wasn't quite to our taste. We did find Pommeau, which is half cider and half calvados and served chilled, and that was lovely. We bought a bottle and it became one of the better decisions of the trip.

Dinner that night at L'Angle Saint Laurent in Bayeux was one of the best meals of the entire France trip. The apartment manager's recommendation. We were there when they opened at seven, ordered the 35-euro tasting menu, and let the kitchen run. Matt had foie gras, then beef tenderloin with foie gras on top with gnocchi, then goat cheese with fig compote, then a crepe filled with chantilly cream and flaming Grand Marnier. I had cauliflower soup with foie gras mousse and bacon, then sea bass with saffron cream and vegetables, then two local Normandy cheeses, then the same crepe. The amuse-bouche was a turnip and egg cream broth that Matt licked from the cup. We had a bottle of Pouilly-Fume from the Loire. Memories were made.

The full D-Day tour the next day was eight hours covering 120 miles and most of the significant sites. It was thirty degrees with a strong wind making it feel colder than that. We had gone to a store the day before and I bought an extra fleece and a hat, which was the right call. Our group of twenty loaded onto a minibus.

The German gun batteries at Longues-Sur-Mer were our first stop, four massive naval guns behind control bunkers, the last two in pristine condition. Matt was already in heaven and the camera was basically an extension of his hand at this point.

Omaha Beach. Four miles of it. High tide when we visited, so the beach itself wasn't visible, which meant you stood at the top and looked out at the water and tried to reconstruct from what you know. When you hear what the plan was for D-Day and then hear what actually happened, the fact that it worked at all is astonishing.

The American Cemetery is 172 acres and contains 9,387 servicemen. That number is the kind of thing that stops you mid-breath. The rows of white crosses seem to go on past what the eye should be able to follow. It is an extraordinarily moving place and I think it always will be, no matter how many times people visit.

Pointe du Hoc was my personal favorite, partly because of what happened there and partly because standing out on that cliff in thirty-degree wind felt appropriately severe for the history. This is where Army Rangers scaled a 100-foot cliff to try to knock out German guns that could fire on both Utah and Omaha beaches. The land is still cratered from the bombing. You walk among the craters and the blasted-out bunkers and it feels like the ground itself remembers.

Sainte-Mere-Eglise is the town with the church that has a fake paratrooper hanging permanently from the steeple, because an actual 101st Airborne soldier landed there on D-Day, got caught on the steeple, played dead for two hours, and eventually escaped. Fifty percent of the paratroopers who jumped that night were killed. That detail has stayed with me.

We went back to L'Angle for dinner again because why deviate from something excellent. Different menu, equally wonderful.

Our final day started with Gordon Ramsay's scrambled eggs at the apartment while we found new music on the CD collection there, then back to Sainte-Mere-Eglise where Matt found what he'd been looking for in the US and couldn't find: a large old German shell casing for his WWII gun room. Then an antique shop produced an old German helmet, complete with bullet holes, at a fraction of what it would cost at home. He was very happy.

The final stop of the entire France trip was in Rouen, and it was mine. Julia Child. The whole trip had been in her orbit in some way: the cooking classes, the kitchen shop where she bought her equipment, standing outside the apartment she shared with Paul on Rue de l'Universite. But this was the real pilgrimage.

La Couronne in Rouen claims to be the oldest inn in France, established in 1345. Julia Child ate there for the first time in November 1948, on her way to Paris with Paul, stopping for lunch from their Buick. She described it as the most exciting meal of her life. The moment that changed everything. If you saw Julie and Julia you know the scene with Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci going absolutely still over that sole. That was here. That was this table.

I ordered the sole meuniere, naturally. The waiter brought it whole on a presentation platter, perfectly browned, butter sauce still sputtering, then wheeled it to a side table and filleted it in under a minute. Four perfect fillets on my plate. Bon appetit.

I closed my eyes. Then I took a bite and chewed slowly. The butter. The mild salty fish. Julia called it a morsel of perfection. I understand completely. I can see exactly how one lunch in 1948 became the beginning of a life.

We drove to the airport full and happy and a little sad the way you always are at the end of something that was genuinely good. Au Revoir, France. You keep outdoing yourself.

The City That Started Everything (And Never Stops)

France  |  Paris  |  March 2009 + March 2013 (4th and 5th visits) 

Paris is our travel home. We've been there more times than anywhere else on earth, and every single time the cab comes around a corner and I see the city appearing outside the window, I feel it. That specific thing. I don't have a word for it, but it's somewhere between relief and joy, like being let back in somewhere you belong.

Our first return trip together after our Honeymoon (which was our second visit together) was in 2009. We arrived the way you always arrive after an overnight flight: feeling like we might not survive the day. Then we got to the hotel, found out there'd been room flooding and they'd moved us into a full apartment down the street with a kitchen and a balcony, and suddenly we felt completely fine. Paris has that effect.

We started at Cafe de Flore on Boulevard Saint-Germain because that's what you do, you sit outside on the sidewalk in the sun and watch Paris go by and eat baguette that doesn't need butter and couldn't be improved by it. Paris baguette is its own category of food. Perfect chew, perfect crust, soft interior, that specific flavor that doesn't exist anywhere else. Matt had ham and eggs with gruyere. I had Welsh Rarebit, which is not rabbit, it's a molten cheesy baked thing on toast and it's wonderful. The real highlight was the Kir: white wine with black currant liqueur, entirely French, entirely perfect at any hour including lunch. We were there two hours. We didn't rush.

That trip we visited the Musee de Cluny, which holds our beloved Unicorn Tapestries from 1500, one for each of the five senses. We have a small replica of one in our dining room. Matt swears the Cluny has the best ceiling in Paris and also the best doorknobs, which is such a Matt thing to care about and I love it. We went to Sainte-Chapelle, which has some of the largest stained glass windows in the world and takes your breath away every time. Then bought tickets to a classical violin concert inside Sainte-Chapelle that evening. Pachelbel, Mozart, and Vivaldi while the sun went down outside and the light faded through those extraordinary windows. I got a little emotional. Some things you don't want to end.

Pere Lachaise Cemetery was a full afternoon. 105 acres, Jim Morrison, Chopin, Oscar Wilde, thousands of other graves in a labyrinth of narrow stone paths. I had visited in 1996 and been moved by one particular grave: two people buried side by side with their hands joined on top, connected in stone. I'd taken a picture of it then but didn't have the name. Finding it again in 105 acres of graves felt impossible. Literally two minutes after I thought about it, there it was directly in front of me. I still can't fully explain that.

The Moulin Rouge did not live up to billing. Matt's exact quote was that "it sucked ass," and the Rockettes in New York are a thousand times better and they're not even topless. That is a direct quote and I stand behind it.

The 2009 trip was also when we finally got the Paris photos we'd always talked about. We'd once planned to come to France and elope. That plan changed, but our desire for photos in the city never did. So for our tenth anniversary together we hired a photographer named Bruno Cohen, who takes stunning photojournalistic-style portraits. Three hours of jumping over puddles, running, pretending to feed ducks, doing an authentic European double-cheek kiss. Bruno had been to Secaucus, New Jersey, somehow, which made us love him even more.

By the 2013 trip it was our fourth visit together and the comfort of it was different. You navigate differently when a city has become yours. We had a full apartment in the Marais neighborhood and immediately went to the market to stock up on Nestle caramel custards, because they sell them in French grocery stores and I would eat them at every meal if allowed. They are nothing like what you buy at home. They taste like creme brulee in a little pot and they cost less than a euro.

On that trip I took two classes with La Cuisine Paris, which I would recommend to anyone who loves food and Paris in any proportion. The first was a market class, starting at the Maubert market with our chef instructor Eric, who had worked in two-Michelin-star restaurants, spent time in Washington DC and Australia, and briefly on a cruise ship before concluding that cruise ships were not for him. He walked us through the market explaining produce, seafood, cheeses, the difference between how Parisians actually shop versus how tourists imagine they do. Then back to the school on the Seine to cook: zucchini veloute with goat cheese whipped cream and mint, duck breast with potatoes cooked in the duck fat, roasted vegetables, and an almond cream cake with roasted pears. Wine and bread throughout, because what meal would be complete without both. I also discovered my new favorite dessert: Paris-Brest, a choux pastry filled with hazelnut cream. The name is what it is. We all enjoyed it enormously.

The second class was baguette-making with Eric again, which I took partly for the pure obsession with it and partly as a personal tribute to Julia Child. Eric taught us that a proper French baguette has exactly four ingredients: flour, yeast, water, salt. That is the law. They check. Everyone in France buys baguette every single day. It is not optional, it is a part of the rhythm of life. I made four small baguettes and some focaccia, about twenty minutes of kneading each, and went home with flour on my shirt and a deep new respect for every person who makes this for a living.

Matt spent those mornings at the Musee de l'Armee and Invalides, the Louvre, Montmartre and Sacre-Coeur, including climbing the 300 steps to the dome for the views, which his calves reported back on at length. He also watched a ring scam operate outside the Opera Garnier, where a person pretends to find a gold ring on the ground and then presents it to you as if you owe them for the discovery. As he was telling me the story, the exact same scam was happening ten feet behind him. Paris is endlessly consistent.

Versailles on this trip was one of our best days. We got a tip from the information desk about a guided tour for seven euros more that grants access to the private royal apartments and the Opera House. The Opera House was built specifically for the wedding celebrations of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who were fourteen and fifteen years old at the time. The whole thing was completed in two years because Louis XV wanted it faster and wood was cheaper than marble. Sitting in a room like that and knowing that history is what Paris keeps doing to you, stacking centuries on top of each other until the weight of it becomes something almost physical.

Marie Antoinette's Trianon estate had pink marble on the outside and bold colors inside and everything about it was extremely her. She had 10,000 shoes at her death and is credited with starting French fashion. The French people actually adored her, which is not how the story usually gets told.

Notre Dame on this 2013 trip was the 850th anniversary, which meant there was a giant structure out front blocking the full view for photographs, which I found personally irritating. But inside, I lit a candle for my dad the way I do every single time I'm there. I think about my first trip here in 1996 when I was young and he was so excited for me, little-kid excited, in the way parents get when they know something big is about to happen to their child. He gave me that trip. Paris changed my life on that first visit and everything that came after it is in some way traceable back to him standing there being excited on my behalf. So there's always a candle.

Sainte-Chapelle on a sunny day, when the light comes through those windows and the whole interior turns colored and luminous, is one of the most beautiful things I've seen anywhere on earth. It never fails. It never will.

The apartment, the market runs, the morning coffee, the easy familiarity of knowing which streets to take. This city keeps giving us new things to find and lets us feel at home at the same time. Je t'aime, Paris. Every time.