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Living in a city beside an inland sea, my morning walk sometimes yields trash, or an odd hello: a washed up, desiccated raccoon, its teeth bared. Dried vomit. Charging geese. Our harmless resident crazy, who mistakes me for Hillary Clinton, and asks after Bill. Why keep walking? Because there’s treasure to be found: a mother

At the end of two weeks in off-the grid Quebec, I braved the bright lights of a (now defunct) bookstore in the Ottawa airport. I had nothing left to read and a two-and-a-half hour flight ahead of me. I picked up Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, because I love books set during World War Two.

Six of us went to Paris last week to eat and shop and look at art. We had no trouble (volcanic ash) coming or going, and while we certainly didn’t plan to benefit from other travelers’ canceled plans, we found it easy to nab reservations at top restaurants, and lines at museums were remarkably short.