Europe Stories | The Lens of Jen

Perfect Day: Reims, the capital of France’s Champagne Region

August 14, 2019 By Jen Leave a Comment

Just 45 minutes from Paris, Reims is a quiet but sparkling destination, boasting more than 250 kilometers of underground champagne cellars carved into its historic hills.

With so many champagne houses to explore in the region, it was difficult to choose the best destinations for our group, but we narrowed it down to the simplest and bubbliest of equations: Which houses have the best wine tastings?

In the end, we came for the champagne and we found so much more. Read on for a step-by-step recap of our Perfect Day in Reims.

My Love Affair with the Loire Valley

July 30, 2019 By Jen 2 Comments

The first time that I visited Saint-Martin-le-Beau, a commune resting near the banks of the River Cher in central France, it was a cold evening in January and the rain slopped across my windshield as I navigated my rental car over the train tracks that run parallel to town.

Because it was nighttime, I didn’t yet realize just how small the town of Saint-Martin is, and I certainly didn’t yet understand just how large a space this place would soon hold in my heart.

A Review of the Mad Cool Festival:

July 22, 2019 By Jen 2 Comments

And Madrid’s love affair with the late-night

You know you’ve been to the Mad Cool Festival when you wake up at 2:00 in the afternoon covered in glitter and sparkles. In fairness, this particular festival in Madrid doesn’t even start until 6:00 in the evening at the earliest and doesn’t wrap up until close to dawn.

The idea is you sleep all day and then dance the night away.

The Martyr Village

March 14, 2019 By Jen 1 Comment

Visiting this village near the city of Limoges in the sparsely populated Haute Vienne Department of France does not involve visiting a place. Rather, it involves visiting a place in time.

Oradour-sur-Glane looks exactly as it did after the fires of June 10, 1944, stopped smoldering, leaving behind only the memories of the villages 642 inhabitants who were inexplicably massacred, and the burned-out shells where there was once a church, a bakery, a deli, a town hall.

Oradour-sur-Glane is purposefully preserved in a state of total ruin so that we never forget the atrocities of war.

In Pursuit of the Perfect Sandwich

February 21, 2019 By Jen 2 Comments

Can you remember that time that you had the perfect sandwich?

It could have been purposefully ordered with anticipation at a fancy rooftop restaurant in Paris or stumbled on at a truck stop during a road trip through the middle of Texas.

The point is, that once tasted, the sandwich must be tasted again.

A View Worth a Scramble in the Sicilian Sun

February 14, 2019 By Jen Leave a Comment

During my recent trip to Chiang Dao, “City of Stars,” I climbed 500 stairs every morning to reach a mountaintop Temple in a remote reach of Northern Thailand.

As I loped up the wide, meandering stairs lined with motivational messages on either side, I recalled a set of stairs in another remote part of the world that were a little less…encouraging.

Perfect Day: Reims, the capital of France’s Champagne Region

My Love Affair with the Loire Valley

A Review of the Mad Cool Festival:

The Martyr Village

In Pursuit of the Perfect Sandwich

A View Worth a Scramble in the Sicilian Sun

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