New Orleans, Louisiana is a favorite US city for us. It’s one of the few places in America where you can walk out of a bar in the French Quarter with a “go-cup” (a plastic cup containing an alcoholic beverage) and not get arrested. The nonchalant atmosphere of the Big Easy gives you a sense of freedom not found in a lot of other locations around the country. With that as a background, we wondered what the original Orléans would be like so we returned to the city where, almost 9 years ago, we spent our first night as permanent residents of France.

Continue reading “The not-so-new Orléans”

Typically we would be writing about taking the train to a vacation destination, especially in France, but today it’s about travel on the Canal de la Marne du Rhine from Lagarde to a city we’ve visited several times, Strasbourg. Two of the times that we’ve been there were in December to experience the colorful holiday atmosphere when it truly earns the nickname, “Capital of Christmas”. This time, however, it was only last week when we were gliding past this Alsatian city’s familiar sites aboard a 22-passenger péniche, a canal hotel barge identical to the ones we cruised with on other French canals.

Continue reading “Sailing to Strasbourg”