Loire Valley

Two giant pandas have arrived from China aboard a special plane and are heading to their new home amid the chateaux of central France. Male Yuan Zi and female Huan Huan are France's first pandas since the death of one more than a decade ago. The endangered animals get only the best: Their "Panda Express" plane, specially configured for their enclosures, was greeted with applause at the Paris airport. On loan from China, Yuan Zi ("chubby" in Chinese) and Huan Huan ("happy")

Two giant pandas have arrived from China aboard a special plane and are heading to their new home amid the chateaux of central France. Male Yuan Zi and female Huan Huan are France's first pandas since the death of one more than a decade ago. The endangered animals get only the best: Their "Panda Express" plane, specially configured for their enclosures, was greeted with applause at the Paris airport. On loan from China, Yuan Zi ("chubby" in Chinese) and Huan Huan ("happy")

PARIS - If we did not expect the unexpected, there would be no need or reason to take a journey. And yet the prospect of surprise resembles the anticipation of seasoning in a dish: You look for a bit of curry, perhaps, but dread the excess. So it was with our autumn journey to France. We had traveled elsewhere in Europe but somehow had avoided that large country, often at the center of the trans-Atlantic cultural conversation. We were hesitant. Dave Barry wrote recently that Americans always feel like fools in French restaurants, never in any other kind, and it might be so of France itself.

THE DISCOVERY OF JEANNE BARET: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe By Glynis Ridley Crown, 304 pp., illustrated, $25 In the winter of 1766–67 the cargo ship Étoile set sail on a round-the-world voyage, a first for France, carrying the eminent naturalist Philibert Commerson and his assistant, a youth called Jean Baret. When at some point in the journey the lad was exposed as Jeanne Baret, a woman, Commerson claimed to be shocked, a farcical performance since Baret had already been his helpmate and mistress for several years.

LINIÈRES-BOUTON, France -- When prefabricated tract houses and modern office buildings began springing up amid the châteaux and stone cottages in his adopted Loire Valley, Jonathan Robinson was horrified. Robinson, 53, an artist who grew up rough on Chicago's South Side, had fled the United States to escape the spread of strip mall architecture, which he says brought literal pain to his eyes. He calls himself an "aesthetic refugee. " So from his painstakingly renovated 19th-century water mill that he has turned into an elegant inn in the Loire's Anjou region, the...

THE DISCOVERY OF JEANNE BARET: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe By Glynis Ridley Crown, 304 pp., illustrated, $25 In the winter of 1766–67 the cargo ship Étoile set sail on a round-the-world voyage, a first for France, carrying the eminent naturalist Philibert Commerson and his assistant, a youth called Jean Baret. When at some point in the journey the lad was exposed as Jeanne Baret, a woman, Commerson claimed to be shocked, a farcical performance since Baret had already been his helpmate and mistress for several years.

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. -- Turns out this sleepy village at the southern tip of Lake Seneca is a full-throttle town. Local lore gives a Cornell University law student the credit for making Watkins Glen the cradle of modern road racing in the United States. Back in 1948, Cameron Argetsinger owned a little red MG that he wanted to wind out against the competition on the area's curvy hills and valleys. So he persuaded the powers-that-be to host the first road race in the country since the end of the war. The event took off and took hold.

DECIZE, France - It would be hard to invent a more limited way to see Europe than on a rented canal barge. You have a choice of two directions, forward or back. Most towns on the map are completely out of reach. Your maximum speed doesn’t quite break 5 miles per hour, and every couple of miles you need to stop completely and wait to be let through a lock. There is some chance you will get your timing wrong and spend the night in an industrial port. Yet people pay thousands of dollars a week to float through the countrysides of various nations by...

NEW YORK - Dorothea Tanning, a leading Surrealist painter of the 1930s whose path had led her from the small town of Galesburg, Ill., to a whirlwind life in the international art world, died Tuesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 101. Her death was confirmed by Mimi Johnson, a niece. Married for 30 years to Surrealist painter and sculptor Max Ernst, Ms. Tanning became well known in her own right for her vivid renderings of dream imagery. Much later in life, after she had reached 80, she gained a different kind of...

NEW YORK - Joe Dressner, an importer whose advocacy of Old World wines made without chemicals or manipulation inspired a sort of natural wine avant-garde, died Sept. 17 at his home in Manhattan. He was 60. The cause was brain cancer. Mr. Dressner's Manhattan-based company, Louis/Dressner Selections, which he formed in 1988 with his wife, Denyse Louis, specialized in wines that he variously termed real, natural, authentic, or heirloom. In an era when most wines are made with grapes grown in chemically farmed vineyards and then manipulated with cultured yeasts...

DECIZE, France - It would be hard to invent a more limited way to see Europe than on a rented canal barge. You have a choice of two directions, forward or back. Most towns on the map are completely out of reach. Your maximum speed doesn’t quite break 5 miles per hour, and every couple of miles you need to stop completely and wait to be let through a lock. There is some chance you will get your timing wrong and spend the night in an industrial port. Yet people pay thousands of dollars a week to float through the countrysides of various nations by barge.

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. -- Turns out this sleepy village at the southern tip of Lake Seneca is a full-throttle town. Local lore gives a Cornell University law student the credit for making Watkins Glen the cradle of modern road racing in the United States. Back in 1948, Cameron Argetsinger owned a little red MG that he wanted to wind out against the competition on the area's curvy hills and valleys. So he persuaded the powers-that-be to host the first road race in the country since the end of the war. The event took off and took hold.

LINIÈRES-BOUTON, France -- When prefabricated tract houses and modern office buildings began springing up amid the châteaux and stone cottages in his adopted Loire Valley, Jonathan Robinson was horrified. Robinson, 53, an artist who grew up rough on Chicago's South Side, had fled the United States to escape the spread of strip mall architecture, which he says brought literal pain to his eyes. He calls himself an "aesthetic refugee. " So from his painstakingly renovated 19th-century water mill that he has turned into an elegant inn in the...

PARIS - If we did not expect the unexpected, there would be no need or reason to take a journey. And yet the prospect of surprise resembles the anticipation of seasoning in a dish: You look for a bit of curry, perhaps, but dread the excess. So it was with our autumn journey to France. We had traveled elsewhere in Europe but somehow had avoided that large country, often at the center of the trans-Atlantic cultural conversation. We were hesitant. Dave Barry wrote recently that Americans always feel like fools in French restaurants, never in any other kind, and it...

No, not that bucket list. We're talking about the list of red wines we prefer to drink only after they've had a good long sit in an ice bucket - enough to bring the temperature down to something distinctly chilly.  If you know something of the pleasures of young, light-bodied red wines sipped cool, it's likely you acquired it somewhere outside the U.S. Here, the sub 60 degree red is either unknown or considered distinctly ...

One of my happiest travel memories is of a canal barge trip through the Champagne region of France a few years ago. One particular incident stands out. It was a sunny day and we passengers were gathered on deck, sipping champagne and soaking up sun as the barge glided at a stately pace down the Marne River Canal. The superb weather, the bubbly wine, and the sights and scents of the lush countryside unrolling beside us combined to produce a feeling of euphoria. Suddenly, spontaneously, we all began to sing "Amazing Grace.