Tag Archives: day trips

summer trips, in and close to NYC

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convention hall and boardwalk
It looks like I’ll be using my free time in Senegal (and Côte d’Ivoire, where I’ll be heading on Monday) to write about other places I’ve been this year. It’s ironic in some ways, but it’s also reflective of what I find so lovely about being here. This part of the world helps me to slow down and provides me with the headspace to sit still and think, and eventually, to write.
So, even though we are half a year out from summer, I’m going to post pics from a few days trips that I took from and in NYC in August(ish). I mean, next summer is halfway here! What better time to daydream about the possibilities than as winter sets in. (That is, for those souls unlucky enough to actually be in NYC at the moment. I’m sitting here in 80 degree weather listening to Youssou N’Dour and feeling like I have somehow cheated winter yet again.)

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Luxembourg for a day

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IMG_4314Disclaimer: I’m very drugged up right now, for reasons I may or may not explain at a later date. Please excuse any weirdness…

Last month I took a high-speed train that got me from Paris to Luxembourg City in less than three hours. Then I had nine hours (as it turned out, the perfect amount of time) to explore the small, verdant city before catching another high-speed train back home. Pictures / drug-infused descriptions after the jump. Continue reading →

Drinking Sancerre in Sancerre

Posted in foreign food festival, French, travel by

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It makes sense that the first (and let’s be honest, probably the last) poem I ever wrote in French was inspired by drinking Sancerre in Sancerre:

C’est clair, si je vais boire un verre,
Mon vin préféré, c’est sancerre
Maintenant je suis sûre,
Que la joie est plus pure
Quand on boit le sancerre sur sa terre.

(I’ll leave the translation to you.)

My first taste of Sancerre was during the spring semester of my senior year at college.

I went for drinks with other soon-to-be-graduating friends at a French-style bistro just off campus. We sat around a small outdoor table in the fresh April air of a faux Parisian terrace, eked out of a Manhattan sidewalk. I had only recently crossed over the divide into legal drinking, and the freedom of choice was thrilling. When a friend of a friend who seemed to come from a glitzy background suggested we order a bottle of Sancerre – her absolute favorite, she said – I was incredulous she could remember the name of a wine, annoyed that a 21 year-old claimed to have a specific wine preference, and even more annoyed that it just happened to be the most expensive one on the menu. We were college students, not college professors.

Still, when the bottle of almost-white rosé arrived and I took my first sip, I had to admit there was something special about this wine. It was crisp and refreshing, with a hint of sparkling grapefruit, and for the first time, I truly enjoyed drinking a glass of wine. I am not sure whether it actually tasted sophisticated or whether I simply read sophistication into the experience, but from that moment on I linked Sancerre with both exceptional taste and understated elegance. In the more than 15 years since that spring evening, it’s the only wine whose taste my ridiculously forgetful palate can identity, the only one I get excited to see on a wine list, and the only one I’ve ever splashed out for at a wine shop.

So, when I realized that the town of Sancerre was less than three hours from Paris, an idea inevitably took shape. How amazing would it be, I daydreamed, to drink a glass of Sancerre in Sancerre?IMG_3526
The answer is: incredibly amazing, especially if it’s a perfectly bright and crisp autumn day, your friend Simona is in town, and your only ambition is to wander around the countryside sipping wine and eating cheese.
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Some more pictures, after the jump… Continue reading →