About France
My articles have appeared in the publications, Bonjour Paris, France Today, Complete France, The Good Life France, and Frenchly.
Gersois Charm
Sue Aran
Imagine traveling to the most rural, least industrialized corner of southwest France with the purest air and longest-living people, isolated from main highways and train lines. Include in this picture white clouds floating in deep blue skies, rolling green hills tufted with flocks of sheep, and herds of blonde Aquitaine cows surrounded by myriad
Obsessive Love
Sue Aran
Of Music and Muses: Hector Berlioz’s Obsessive Love It can often be said that love has no limits or boundaries, but obsession does. This is no more true than in the relationship between the French composer, Hector Berlioz, and the Shakespearean actress, Harriet Smithson. In the years following the French Revolution (1789), a new movement
French Bounty
Sue Aran
“I think food, culture, people and landscape are all absolutely inseparable.” Anthony Bourdain The lure of France has never dimmed, nor has the lure of French cuisine. In Gascony, the Pays Basque, Occitanie and Provence in particular (where I currently lead slow travel tours) good food, carefully prepared with first rate ingredients is not a
Death by Chocolate
Sue Aran
The history of chocolate, and its circuitous route to Paris, is not for the squeamish. From human sacrifice to the infamous Spanish Inquisition, the growing and harvesting of cacao seeds for the production of chocolate has tortured, enslaved, and seduced. The cacao tree was not domesticated in Central America as previously thought. Traces of cacao
The Paris Alphabet
Sue Aran
The unique charm of Paris is based upon its savoir-vivre, that je ne sais quoi… the indescribable, yet completely recognizable, way of life which has become embedded in our subconscious. To “think Paris”, as the writer Paul Valéry noted, is to know the true insider history of what makes this city a mélange of mortar and myth.
Lost In Paris
Sue Aran
As anyone who has ever visited Paris knows, it is a walking city. Even the monumentality of its arrondisements does not overshadow its human scale and accessibility for pedestrians. Keeping in mind that every building of any note is usually within walking distance of the Seine, I decided to forgo a map and wander, à
Collioure Magic
Sue Aran
Catalonia, where the craggy Pyrénées mountains descend into the Mediterranean Sea. The view seen from high above the coast encompasses a rich landscape of geometrically captivating vineyards and jagged shoreline. Inextricably anchored between France and Spain, Collioure is considered the pearl of the Côte Vermeille. Known since the time of the seagoing Phoenicians, this charmingly
Vaucluse Venice
Sue Aran
“Song of the Sorgue” River rushing by so fast, at full pelt on your own… River where the lightening ends and where my home begins… René Char A subterranean aquifer, the source of the Sorgue River, runs along the rim of a precipitously rugged outcropping high above the village of Fontaine de Vaucluse, its 7-kilometer
Pays d’Artagnan
Sue Aran
As you drive through the remote, southwestern French countryside, down narrow plane tree-lined allées past villages shrouded in mystery, you get the sense that the area looks much as it did during the time of d’Artagnan, one of its most renowned heroes. He was not just a fictionalized character from the Alexandre Dumas novels, but a real person named Charles Ogier