Category
CROISSANT TEARS
The idea of leaving Lyon didn't feel real—so surely it wasn't, right? I'd been in the city for four blissful weeks, and the thought of not being there anymore felt like a vague concept that I couldn't quite put my finger on. It felt like something that might happen to some other unfortunate soul, on some other day.
As an artist in need of a jolt of inspiration back in January of 2020, I'd applied for an Alexa Rose grant before the pandemic began, having no idea how much I would need it by the time I was able to use my funding. When I finally arrived in France—more than two years after submitting my application—it was as an easily-startled shell of my former self, shrunken from two years of pandemic life and, even more so, from the shock of losing my beloved world-traveling dad to the virus in October of 2021. It was March 2022 when I arrived in Lyon, and on my third day, I was stunned to notice I was subconsciously ceding the right of way to pigeons as they pecked along. The realization made me stop short on a street corner, reeling as I came face to face with just how small I'd come to feel over the past two years.
THE GOOD LIFE IN LYON
One day, we ran out of flour while baking but found we had a back-up bag in the pantry, and I turned to my husband and said, “That feels like a sign we’re living the good life.” Since then, it’s become a happy little habit in our household to name signs of the good life when we find them. From a well-stocked pantry to a vase of flowers on the dining table, the signs of the good life we’ve identified are the things that make us the most content, and make us feel like the work we put in to achieve the life we want is well worth it.
What constitutes “the good life” is, of course, personal. It varies from individual to individual, and it often differs widely among generations. But it’s also cultural. And with hundreds and hundreds of cultures out there, there are different versions of the good life waiting to be discovered all over the world. It’s possible to travel to other countries and eat only at chain restaurants you can find back home, or bounce between major monuments and come home with only miniature souvenir versions of those monuments to show for it; but in my book, the best travelers are the ones who travel to discover a taste of the good life according to the place they’re in. By being observant, open, and curious, a traveler can discover what real daily life looks like in another place—and if you’re lucky, and if you play your cards right, you may just get to go a step further and sample the good life in that place. Once you do, it’s addicting. I find myself wanting to spend my life traveling the world in search of as many different versions of the good life as I have the good fortune to experience. Each one is unique and special, and alluring in its own way.
GETTING ON BOARD
It’s a blessing and a curse: if want to retain my breakfast, I can’t read, draw, or look at anything that isn’t my immediate surroundings while I’m on a train. In general, I try to fly under the radar while traveling, and while I don’t particularly fancy drawing attention to myself in any major way, the digestive-upset way would pretty much be my worst nightmare. To boot (pun intended), these incredible French breakfasts are keepers: warm little pillows of pain au chocolat with hidden chocolate tucked inside, ultra-flaky croissants with a unique kaleidoscope pattern at the center of each one, spiraled puff pastry roulades topped with bright green pistachio bits, and a tiny, perfect petit café to complement them all. Each one is special and unique, every flake of croissant dough a souvenir of a moment of joy, and I certainly have every intention of keeping them all with me.
THE WHOLE LOAF
On my third day of solo travel, I realized I had been subconsciously ceding the right of way to pigeons as they pecked by in their search for crumbs.
I’m a traveler by nature, and a relatively brave one at that—I’d lived abroad for a year after college, ridden in tuk-tuks through massive cities halfway across the world, and traveled solo for much of my twenties. But over the course of the previous two years, along with everyone else, I’d watched helplessly as the pandemic shrunk my world until it was made up of just me, my husband, and our dog, hiding in our basement and binge-watching really dumb TV. Those early days of quarantine and fear and sadness were awful enough, but as time wore on, things just became harder as the virus took more and more away from us all.
BEHIND THE SCENES: THE AROUND THE WORLD AND BACK AGAIN COVER
Last year—and by year, I mean the decade that was 2020–my husband and I were an hour from boarding a flight to Portugal when the first Covid-19 travel ban was issued. It was early March and 11 PM at JFK, and we stood there blearily trying to parse the garbled language in the order before pulling our bags from the flight and deciding to find a silver lining in a New York vacation instead. Over the course of the next few days, we kept a wary eye on the headlines abroad from a room in a fancy hotel in Midtown—which we got at a ridiculously low rate we now refer to as the “apocalypse special”—and had just enough time to eat some incredible food and be thoroughly freaked out by the ghost streets of the city before hightailing it home as we all collectively realized that the virus was about to take over our lives.