As we March ahead with 2012, I feel it is important to introduce you to the terrific two that make UnTours France and UnTours Quebec City so incroyable and filled with that, how do you say?, je ne sais quoi. Meet Dodge Amaral and Mia Lehmann! If you’re even entertaining the thought of going to…
Category Archives: France
Adam Gopnik, and other love-hate phenomena related to France.
There are two kinds of travellers: some take trips, while others are really “tryin on a new life” on each journey This second kind of traveler dreams of moving abroad, dropping everything, and truly inhabiting a locale they’ve fallen in love with on a trip. One might compare this to daydreaming,while you’re on a…
Untourist of the Week: Barbara Cheesman aka Francophile & Co.
Categories
1.”Tell us a little bit about your most recent UnTour.” It was back to Provence yet another time! Having explored much of France over the years, my husband Jerry and I,or my two Francophile friends, Lorraine, Marcia, and I, have returned to Provence to the same apartment (Gamet 2) in St. Didier annually since 2005…
A Fabulous Escape by Larry Kueneman, Untourist
Today’s post was written by Larry Kueneman, an UnTourist who spent 2 weeks in Alsace and 2 weeks at a Bavarian castle in Germany with UnTours. The following is his account of his trip. A Fabulous Escape Most of us have heard people complain after spending tons on a port-to-port cruise ship where things went…
A Year in the Merde…and other books to help you figure out the French
Categories
Anyone who’s been to France knows fairly quickly…they are definitely not in Kansas anymore. There’s a pretty hefty bibliography of books that can help you bridge this culture gap you’re bound to hit when you visit France. We’d like to help you get from “what the heck?!” to “vive la difference!” in as short a…
Eating Out in Provence: Our Favorite Restaurant in Isle-sur-la-Sorgue
Categories
When you head out on your next (or first, which, in that case, will definitely not be your last) vacation in Provence, after you make sure your bags are packed, your plane is on time, and all your cares in the world are placed neatly in the corner of your closet, remember to make reservations…
Untourist of the week: Steve Savel
Categories
Our UnTourist of the Week is Steve Savel, who with his wife Karen have gone on 20 different UnTours. We feature Steve during our France month, because they’ve gone to Alsace twice, but they really are the definitive Renaissance UnTourists…they do it all! 1. “Tell us a little bit about your most recent UnTour.” My…
Culture clue: “esprit de l’escalier” and other untranslatable moments.
Categories
In between helping my dad, Hal Taussig, get UnTours started in the 70’s and returning in the 00’s (once I had a family to raise and expose to international travel the way my father had done for me), I had another job. For about a decade, I taught cultural diversity workshops to corporate employees. It’s…
How to Get Around Paris by Bus
When planning today’s blog post about getting around Paris by bus, Dodge Amaral (our resident Paris Expert) shared this piece he received a few years ago from longtime UnTourist Judith Wagner. She writes of a trip to Paris with her mother and how taking the buses gave her a much more Parisian experience. Enjoy! Riding…
Untourist of the week: Ron Redman
Categories
1.”Tell us a little bit about your most recent UnTour.” Our most recent UnTours trip was two weeks in Alsace last May/June. It was our fourth UnTours, the others being Provence, Andalusia, and Umbria, in that order over the past few years. Each trip was two weeks. They were all marvelous. We selected Alsace with…