That goes too for the Pierre Loti Museum, where a mosque disassembled in Damascus has been reassembled in the museum’s ballroom. Wow! We prefer to relax in leParis pretty little faux bamboo lobby while Edith and Jack go off to Bernard’s. LaLanne’s enthusiasm about the future of Rochefort, Charente Maritime and the Atlantic beaches is [...]

No wonder the guide books ignore Rochefort; on Sunday almost everything is closed. Everything but patisseries: opposite the hotel a long line extends out the bakery door and up the street. The line moves slowly. I picture each patron going crazy over the selection of assorted fresh fruit tarts, layered and solid chocolate slabs, imaginatively [...]

Chance Meetings, Choice Places
Nathalie Zeidman If my friend Edith hadn’t had a romance with a French sailor at New York’s Stage Door Canteen fifty years ago, I’d never have seen Rochefort-sur-Mer. It’s not even in most guidebooks. Still, after three hectic weeks of touring, it turned out to [...]

Monet painted hundreds of local rural scenes in the vicinity: the haystacks, in the viled light of different times of day and seasons; the fields of grain, the landscapes. The artist sought always that subtle synergy of color that resulted in the quiet brilliance that is his mark. He made innumerable sketches of local citizenry [...]