July, Noted: Returning to Provence, Introducing a New Series, and How to Read a Place

One of the bigger decisions I made this month was where to base myself for my next trip to Provence. I decided to return to L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue.

The first time I visited was 15 years ago, and like so many people, I went for the famous Sunday antique market. I loved it, but this time I realized I wanted to experience the town completely differently.

Instead of visiting on market day, I’ll be there during the week, when hundreds of antique shops are open. Ironically, many of them close on Sundays because their owners are busy selling at the market.

I’ll also be using L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue as my base and taking the train to nearby towns I haven’t explored before. It’s become one of my favourite ways to travel: returning to somewhere familiar while leaving room to discover somewhere new.

Looking back over everything I wrote this month, I realized that decision found its way into almost every piece. I wasn’t planning a theme, but perhaps that’s the funny thing about writing. Sometimes you don’t notice what’s on your mind until you see it reflected back at you.

You know what I am realizing now is that I fall in love with a place not only because it’s beautiful, but more often than not, because I know something about it.

Tell me the story behind an old doorway or what stood on that spot hundreds of years ago, and suddenly I want to slow down and look a little more closely so I don’t miss a single detail.

That’s really what inspired my newest monthly series, The Art of Flâneuring.

I began with Rue de l’Abreuvoir in Montmartre, not just because it’s one of the most photographed (and visited) streets in Paris, but I wanted to share the stories behind it. The kind of details that transform a pretty street into one you’ll never quite look at the same way again.

Jenny Van Stone shared her strolls are rarely so well-informed after reading it, which is the best compliment I could ever receive for this very first one.

I also brought together everything that’s currently waiting inside the Close Circle, which is the paid side of this publication, where I share monthly gifts of trip planning tools and resources to members.

At the moment, there are three guides that all solve a different problem. One helps you determine how you want your next trip to feel before you start building your itinerary; one helps you stay present once you’re there; and one might be the most overlooked part of trip planning altogether: choosing where to stay, with an exclusive offer from me to provide a complimentary accommodations search for your next trip.

They’re practical resources, but they all come back to the same idea: how do you stop feeling like you’re racing through a destination... and start feeling like you’ve actually experienced it?

Everything You Get When You Join the Close Circle

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Jul 8

A few years ago, I found myself at a crossroads. Decades into a corporate career in HR leadership, one built carefully and, by most measures, successfully, I had to ask myself a harder question than “what’s next.” It was closer to: do I keep climbing a ladder I no longer want, or do I have the courage to simplify my life and answer to no one but myself?

This recurring conversation keeps coming up where someone tells me they’re thinking about going back to say Paris or Rome, and almost immediately they follow it with an explanation: “I know I should probably go somewhere new...” or “I’ve already been there, maybe I should see somewhere different.”

It’s as though returning needs to be justified in today’s conversations we have with each other. I even catch myself doing it with those who don’t know me very well.

You see, I’ve never been a big believer in collecting destinations. I can even remember a time when I was embarrassed to say how few countries I’ve actually been to, especially when people know how much I love to travel. Even a former colleague remarked how well-travelled so and so was because they’ve been to nearly 40 different countries, saying it in a way that made me feel like less of a “serious” traveller.

The more I travel, the less interested I become in seeing somewhere simply because I haven’t been there before. For me, there needs to be a greater pull than that. For I understand that some places speak to us only once, while others we can’t seem to get out of our minds, and never have I thought there was anything unadventurous about answering that.

That’s the opposite of what travel looks like these days, so much so that I’ve started wondering if we’re asking ourselves the wrong question.

Instead of, “Where should I go next?” what if we asked, “Where would I happily spend more time?” I suspect the answer would tell us far more about ourselves and what we are craving in our lives in that moment.

Go Back. That's the Whole Trip.

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Jul 12

Most people think returning to the same place is a failure of imagination. Like you’ve run out of new ideas. Like a well-travelled person should always be pointing somewhere they’ve never been.

For me, returning to places is my comfort zone. That doesn't mean you can't do both. Some of my favourite trips have combined a place I know well with somewhere completely new, and I know many of you commented you feel that way too, like Dale • Travel & Books, Take Another Look and From Now to France.

That's exactly what I explore each month in A Slow Return, which is available to everyone for 30 days before moving to the Close Circle archive.

One of the unexpected joys of the monthly interview series called Just Between Us has been borrowing someone else's perspective for a little bit.

I spend so much time looking at places through my own lens that it’s refreshing to hear how another traveller experiences the very same city.

Every conversation reminds me that there isn’t one “right” way to know a place. We all notice different things. We’re drawn to different places, and we return for different reasons.

That’s exactly why I enjoy these conversations so much, not to mention the fantastic recommendations you pick up, but more importantly, you get an understanding of how another traveller experiences the world.

I think that’s something we could all use a little more of, and I loved this month with Marie of Parisian Sundays I Marie G.

One of my favourite parts of sharing my daily photo through Substack Notes is seeing where they take all of you.

A single image can remind someone of a trip they took years ago. It can spark a memory they’d forgotten or make them imagine a life they’ve been dreaming about.

That happened more than once this month, but this one definitely sparked the most attention.

There are way too many of you who took the time to comment, but special shout-out to Jhansi Lakshmi Chilukuri who shared a sketch they’d drawn after seeing it, Between Cities & Sentences who shared her mini daydream of turning this into a coffee shop with huge bookshelves and Brenda Ponsard who recalled her art history professor wrote a book about this Tuscan town, Pienza.

And then there was this one.

The double-helix staircase prompted Karina to remember walking it with a friend. They each took a different entrance, followed their own spiral path, and met again at the bottom.

I loved that story because it reminded me that we don’t all see the same photograph.

We each bring our own memories, hopes and experiences to it, and somehow the image becomes something a little different for every one of us.

Thank you for sharing those moments with me. I genuinely enjoy reading them, and I hope you’ll continue to tell me the stories my photos bring back for you.