Jean-Claude Baldassari fell in love in Paris last year with a visiting Chicago finance expert named Jane. He fell so fast and so hard (a “coup de foudre” is what he told me yesterday, his eyes sparkling as he held up the wedding photo that is his response to “why did you move here from Paris?”) that he quit his job at a Marais pub and followed his Jane to Chicago. He just opened Paris in Chicago on north Halsted, a café-style restaurant where he personally serves warm croissants and espresso at 7:00 a.m.

“You can’t get there from here,” is the punch line of an old joke about travelers in Maine. One of the pleasures of living in France is that you can get there from here and we do. Each year we explore new areas of Europe. If there ever were a place in Italy as cozy as a nest, it's the medieval town of Lucca.