In July of 2020, we escaped crowded Paris for a remote region of Greece. This audio story, excerpted from my memoir-in-progress about my family’s expat years in Paris, is exclusive to subscribers at The Wandering Writer.
In May of 2020, two weeks after the first lockdown ended in France, we took a day trip by car to Auvers sur Oise, where Van Gogh spent his final months.
Once able to go only 1km from our home, we were now allowed to travel up to 100 km, and this beautiful little riverside town is just 30 km from Paris. Wandering around town, you’ll see the fields that inspired some of Van Gogh’s most celebrated works. You can walk through these fields and imagine the painter there, moved by the sky and the vast open spaces. A narrow path running through town opens on one side to the river, on the other to a series of private homes, where we saw children playing and families gathering for meals. After the long gray lockdown of Paris, it was a joy to witness those familial scenes.
Auvers sur Oise was peaceful that weekend, as borders were still closed and no one could travel very far within the country. The video begins on the steps of Auvers, memorialized in the painting of the same name, and ends at the the boarding house where he spent his last days. He died in an upper room of the boarding house. According to the sign, the room has not been changed since that day in 1890. The boarding house is now a restaurant, and the building attracts a lot of tourists during normal times.
From this path you can wander up to the church, then keep going up the hill to the small cemetery where Vincent Van Gogh is buried beside his brother, Theo. I visited the famous cemeteries of Paris to see the graves of Simone de Beuvoire, John Paul Sartre, Degas, Edith Piaf, Moliere. Jim Morrison, Balzac, and so many others. But none of the gravesites moved me in the way this simple, rustic gravesite for Vincent and Theo did. For a touching glimpse of this fraternal relationship, read Dear Theo, comprised of letters written from Van Gogh to his supportive younger brother.
image of Golden Gate Bridge, by Simone Enderlin
I fell in love with San Francisco on a family vacation when I was thirteen years old. I decided then that I would live here someday. Fast forward to Fayetteville, Arkansas, 1995. I was doing a brief layover at The University of Fayetteville. Brief enough not to lose my mind, but long enough to meet a boy from San Francisco. The rest is history.
When The Telegraph asked me to talk about what no Londoner should miss on a trip to San Francisco, it wasn’t easy to whittle it down. From where to eat to what to avoid, here are my top recommendations for tourists in San Francisco.
Read San Francisco, My Kind of Town, in The Telegraph.