Author Archives: len

Aboard the Train a Grand Vitesse (TGV), Paris to Cannes This train is bound for glory, Spencer Bohren sings in my headphones as I begin today’s Chronicles. So I’ll go with that. Deb is working on crochet, Darlene is reading … Continue reading →

A rainy day at the garden of the Sun King in Versailles. Tweet

As I approached the palace at Versailles this morning, an entire parking lot of tour buses announced what I would find: endless crowds. Yesterday I’d arrived at the Musee Picasso a half hour after it closed, and the Segway tour … Continue reading →

Near the start of our Segway tour of Paris today, we posed on the Human Transporters in front of a landmark where, on average, 152 wedding proposals are made daily. Tweet

Hotel Apollon Montparnasse, Paris Segway City Tours has perfected the training of Segway novices, and within an hour Deb, Darlene and I were gliding along with a trio of Texan women. As you can imagine, a Segway tour of Paris … Continue reading →

On the way to Paris this morning at 186 mph, listening to the Beatles on headphones, tapping out an e-mail on the Vaio. Photo by Darlene. Tweet

Joyce Heard, a staffer with Len at The Harvard Crimson 30-plus years ago, hosts us for lunch today on the terrace of her home at 9 rue Montmajor, Aix-en-Provence. Tweet

Chronicles subscriber Ben Beach, the best maintainer of old friendships that I have ever known, alerted me to the fact that our fellow Crimson comrade Joyce Heard lives in Aix, an easy 90-minute drive on the A8 Autoroute from Cannes. … Continue reading →

“Construction Zone: Prohibited to the Public,” a sign warns beside Boulevard Jean Jaures in downtown Nice this afternoon. Tweet

While Darlene and Deb explored Nice just off the Promenade des Anglais, I assigned myself an experiment of composing a photo of complementary shapes and colors from a scene that no normal tourist would choose to illustrate how much prettier … Continue reading →