France Revisited | Travel, Experience, Explore, Understand, Laugh, Live

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Olivier Dirson in the Somme American Cemetery. Photo GLK.

Olivier Dirson, WWI battlefield guide: one history leads to another

By Gary Lee Kraut

Through films, books, maps, and travels one quickly gains a sense of the sweeping movement of World War II combat. In Normandy in particular, the D-Day Landing Beaches and the sites and museums maps devoted of the ten weeks of fighting in the Invasion of Normandy quickly reveal to visitors the efforts of Germans forces to defend the coast, the efforts of Allied forces to gain a foothold on the continent, and the momentum of their thrust inland.

Detail, Pont Alexandre III. Photo GLK.

August in Paris: If Julia Roberts Only Knew

By Gary Lee Kraut

There is a common misconception that Paris shuts down during the month of August, that it becomes a ghost town abandoned to tourists while Parisians all flee to country homes and nude beaches.

Allegorical sculpture of the City of Paris on the Pont Mirabeau. Photo GLK

Where the Seine Flows, and Our Love: The Mirabeau Bridge

by Gary Lee Kraut

Paris has historical bridges, elegant bridges, workaday bridges, metro bridges, and pedestrian bridges; it has stone bridges, iron bridges, and 2-, 3-, and 5-span bridges. And it has one most evocative bridge in its Mirabeau Bridge, le Pont Mirabeau, famous not for its beauty or for its view but for a poem that it inspired.

The Eiffel Tower seen from place du Trocadero. Photo GLK

The Eiffel Tower: A Star Is Born

By Gary Lee Kraut

Protest and Progress

A letter protesting the construction of the Eiffel Tower was published in Paris on February 14, 1887, less than three weeks after Gustave Eiffel broke ground on the tower that would far overtake the Washington Monument as the world’s tallest manmade structure.

Germany battery at Longues-sur-Mer, Normandy

War Stories, Normandy

by Gary Lee Kraut

I was woken by the rain at 6:30 a.m. Except that it wasn’t the rain; it was water drizzling into the room from the ceiling.

In a moment of veteran-like panic, I had a flashback to one year ago when a clogged water main broke and my upstairs neighbors failed to realize that their toilet was flushing into my WC. (When I up to tell them about it they said, “We don’t have a problem. See,” they showed me, “the toilet flushes just fine.”)

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Summer gives way to fall this month with the revival of commerce and culture in Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, and Bordeaux and renewed calm on the coast and in the country. France Revisited is revving up for the new season with explorations on all fronts, from art and gastronomy in Paris to lakes and streams in Provence, from viticulture in Bordeaux to royal culture in Blois, plus our always insightful and entertaining blogs. Stay turned for our mid-September issue, coming soon.