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If you are a regular reader of my blog, you are well aware of my ardent belief in the power of serendipity. In Serendipity and the Boob Tree I wrote about my unexpected encounter with Marie Antoinette’s tumor-riddled tree. In Serendipity in a Prison I told you about a chance encounter I had in a chateau prison deep in the heart of the Loire Valley. Today, I would like to tell you about a frighteningly-fabulous serendipitous encounter. Five years ago, I read about an event that occurred during the French Revolution which captured my imagination. At the height of the Reign of Terror, the bloodiest period of the revolution, a black hearted official came up with a new and thoroughly dishonorable way of executing enemies of the Republic. Jean-Baptiste Carrier, an especially cruel member of the new government, gave the order to have 90 prisoners placed on a flat-bottomed barge, taken to the middle of the Loire River, and drowned. Thousands of people, most of them innocent of any real c

F ourteen years ago, I had a successful career as a journalist and a busy personal life that included frequent trips abroad. I ran with the bulls in Pamplona, went diving with dolphins in Honduras, scaled the Acropolis in Athens, and surfed the waves off the coast of Spain. When I became pregnant, I traded my power suits and pumps for khakis and loafers. I exchanged my night courses for night feedings. I packed away my suitcases and purchased a diaper bag. Sometimes, late at night, after baths, prayers and two readings of Lily and the Purple Plastic Purse , I found myself longing for my old life. I did not regret giving up my career to stay home with my children, but I did miss the stimulation I got from traveling to foreign countries. Trips to the park and Gymboree were not enough for me. I wanted adult stimulation. Finally, my husband decided I deserved a vacation from motherhood. He sent my mother and me to Paris, where we spent seven glorious days touring museums, monument

I have often fantasized that a long lost relative would bequeath me an old chest crammed with treasured family documents.  Hidden between a stack of love letters and a scrapbook filled with momentos would be the document that would provide the irrefutable proof linking me to my idol, Marie Antoinette .    So when I saw an advertisement from the DNA Ancestry Project promising to trace my genetic history I became crazy excited.  "With a simple swab of your mouth, you can be compared with Marie Antoinette and discover your relation to her. You will be able to trace your heritage back to times of grandeur, to times of kings and queens and royal balls, and possibly even to Marie Antoinette." Although I am not convinced that reincarnation is anything more than a fantastic theory, I have considered the notion that I might have once lived at the court of Versailles.  Perhaps I was one of Marie Antoinette's most treasured confidants.  My close friends are convinced that I w

M y obsession with Marie Antoinette has long been documented. I have leafed through dusty old books, scoured museums, and written to curators in search of a gown, a slipper, or a scrap of a chemise that may have once belonged to my idol. I have trudged through the vomit-filled streets of New Orleans just to gaze at her portrait, suffered frostbite so I could retrace her steps in Paris on a brutally cold winter day, and been nearly arrested for taking forbidden photographs of her commode on display at Petite Trianon. I successfully navigated my way through the warrens of Osaka to attend a frightfully small exhibit of paintings and personal items once owned by Marie Theresa, Marie Antoinette’s mother. I have visited the Musee Carnavalet in Paris to behold her lock of hair, slipper, and dishes, wept while standing in the threshold of her cell at the Conciergerie Prison, and made pilgrimages to the place of her birth (Hofburg Palace, Vienna) and the place of her brutal death (Place de la C

If you are fortunate enough to visit Salzburg, Austria be sure to head to the grand Hotel Sacher and order yourself a slice of the Sacher Torte. Considered by some to be the most famous chocolate cake in the world, this smooth, rich torte has been made following the same recipe for over 175 years. The torte is made with the finest organic ingredients and leaves just the slightest hint of apricot on the tongue. I paired mine with a cup of tea and consumed both while staring at the photographs that line the café walls of the many celebrities who have indulged in Sacher’s delicacies. My children preferred the chocolate-raspberry cake with chocolate mousse filling. They washed their cake down with cups of thick, rich hot chocolate (and were on a sugar buzz for the rest of the week).

I'll admit it: I am a Type A Personality. At no time does this become more abundantly clear than in the weeks leading up to a vacation. I flip through Fodor's and Frommer's, read the reviews posted on Lonely Planet, Hotels.com, and Trip Advisor, and methodically, obsessively construct an hour-by-hour itinerary. I am sure the more Freudian types would say that I have an intrinsic insecurity and inability to yield control, but I believe my compulsive planning stems from an entirely healthy respect for the limited nature of time. In other words, to quote the immortal and incomparable power-balladeer, Steven Tyler, I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing . It is with pride, and perhaps a tiny bit of shame, I confess to having worn-out some of hardiest of world travelers. If you want to see every museum and monument in a ten mile radius of Paris in seven days or less, I am your gal! Paradoxically, the moments I have come to appreciate the most have been the spontaneous ones. On

I have written about the many magnificent, serendipitous events that happen on my adventures, but I have never told you about the time that serendipity grabbed me by the throat and squeezed until I could barely breathe. I t happened in a prison deep in the heart of the Loire Valley in France (Naturally. Aren't all good stories set in prisons in France? The Count of Monte Cristo, The Man in the Iron Mask, to name but a few). M arch 16, 2005 was a cold, damp, gloomy day. The kind of day that begs a body to stay inside, enveloped in a cashmere blanket, curled up in a comfy chair beside a roaring fireplace. It was the perfect day to hunker down with a good mystery novel or a moody movie, like the film noir classic, Laura, but, I was far from my cozy chair and stack of books. I was in France. F orgive me, for I have jumped ahead in my tale. Allow me to wander further back in time... A few weeks before that dark and gloomy day in March, I had put the finishing touches on my fo

J’adore Paris.        I adore the way her old, cobblestoned streets form a labyrinth that require a pedestrian to possess sturdy shoes, a stout constitution, and a reliable map. I adore the charming wrought iron balconies found on many of her buildings, the art deco Metro signs in her Latin Quarter, and the old world lampposts that circle her many gardens. I love the way the yeasty scent of freshly baked bread hangs in the air from early morning until late afternoon; the street performers who fill the Metro stations with their haunting violin music; the self-impressed locals who genuinely believe they are superior to all other people in the world simply because they were born in Paris. I love her museums, gardens, theaters, and stores.  I adore her hustle and bustle, her glitz and glamour. More than anything, though, I adore her bistros.     I adore Paris for her magnificence, opulence, and sophistication, but I adore her bistros for their simplicity and lack of pretention. The ch