Since I can’t travel to Europe at this time, I’m continuing the long process of updating my old posts to relink the photos, a time-consuming task but one which is bringing back many wonderful memories. In many cases, I’m adding even more pictures to those I had posted previously. Luckily, every one of my 43,000 photos on my phone is dated, and in some cases, I’m using a Google search to identify some of the locations.

To date, I’m just about finished with updating the posts about our 2010 trip to France where we visited Paris churches and attended a superb early music festival in the medieval town of Saintes.

Here’s a summary of the latest posts that have been updated:

• 07/21 | Orléans Cathedral and Tarte Tatin – On our last day in France, we visited the hotel where the famous dessert, Tarte Tatin, was invented. It’s a dessert I’ve made successfully many times.

• 07/19 | Chateaux Tours from Tours – We visited the chateaux of Amboise, where Leonardo da Vinci is buried, and Chenonceaux, and finished the day visiting two wine cellars.
• 07/19 | Beaugency – We rented a brand new Mercedes Benz to drive to Beaugency, and I was reminded of a round I learned at camp: Orléans, Beaugency, Notre-Dame, de Cléry, Vendome, Vendome. All these cathedrals are located here in the Loire Valley!
• 07/18 | Spectacular St Eustache and Cité de la Musique – We heard some spectacular organ playing at the church of St Eustache, where organist Jean Guillou was for many years; and went to a museum of historic and sometimes weird, musical instruments.

• 07/17 | Bach to Paris — a comedy of errors! – We ended up taking a slow train to Paris which took four hours and then when we checked into the hotel at 10:30 pm, all the restaurants were closed and we were starving.
• 07/16 | Our last full day in Saintes – We heard a concert by the training orchestra for Orchestre de Champs-Elysées.
• 07/15 | Great artists, great people – We met fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout and baritone Peter Kooij and gave them chocolate macadamia candy from Hawaii!
• 07/15 | 33 Years of Music-Making – Today was our anniversary and we had an elegant dinner in the hotel.

• 07/14 | Bastille Day in Bordeaux – Most memorable was an elegant lunch we savored at the Café Opéra in Bordeaux.
• 07/14 | Sunday in Saintes – We attended the service at the Cathedral of St Pierre and attended two concerts at the festival. The choir concert in the evening was absolutely wild!
• 07/14 | World-Class Collegium Vocale Ghent – We spent the day at La Rochelle, a seaport, then heard a truly world class choir.
• 07/14 | Cognac and Couperin – We visited the Hennessy cognac distillery and heard an all-Couperin concert.
• 07/12 | Ensemble Huelgas: Choral Perfection – We heard an all “a cappella” concert by Clemens non Papa, and the group, Ensemble Huelgas, was choral perfection to the nth. 
• 07/11 | In the footsteps of Duruflé and Messiaen – We visited St Etienne du Mont and La Trinité, the churches most known for their musicians.
• 07/08 | Victory at Versailles! – We missed most of the tourists when we visited the opulent palace of Versailles first thing in the morning.
• 07/07 | Battle of the Louvre – We were two of 60,000 people who used to visit the Louvre every day.
• 07/07 | St Clotilde and Chartres – St. Clotilde was the parish of César Franck. We also enjoyed taking the train to visit Chartres, where the guide may have been the same one I had forty-some years ago.
• 07/05 | Fabulous fast food from Fauchon – Elegant takeout from this famous gourmet shop in Paris.

• 07/05 | In the footsteps of Saint-Saens, Fauré and Chopin – We visited St. Germain-des-Près, former post of André Marchal, a well-known blind organist, followed by St Séverin, which was one of the first posts taken by Camille Saint-Saëns.
• 07/04 | The Sacraments in St Sulpice and Notre Dame – The highlight of the day was definitely the service at Saint Sulpice, where forty years ago, I attended three services every Sunday to listen to my teacher, Marcel Dupré, improvise.
• 07/03 | Return to Meudon – My first visit back to Marcel Dupré’s home where I had lessons forty+ years ago!
• 07/01 | Au revoir, Honolulu! Bonjour, Paris! – We are off tonight for three weeks in France! It will be Carl’s first-ever visit to Paris, and it will be my first since I spent a summer studying organ with French virtuoso, Marcel Dupré, right out of high school.

Hey, did I mention that the food in France was FABULOUS!