The Authorized Version

Originated by the same company that started The Orient Express, The Blue Train—which got its name from the color of its sleeper cars, not from the fact that it connected to the Côte d’Azur, as I had thought—has had a long and checkered career, interrupted by wars and economic changes, but it remains a symbol of elegance and luxury, and its name conjures images of the epitome of opulent travel.

My first glimpse of this extravagant world was watching the movie “Mr. Bean&rsquo...

Ah, Le Negresco, symbol of the French Riviera and one of the world’s most luxurious hotels.

No, my daughter-in-law and I didn’t stay there. After all, the current owner Madame Jeanne Augier reportedly replied to Bill Gates’ offer to buy it that, “He couldn’t afford it.”

But surely, our accommodation was a close second-best as our Air B and B was only a few hundred feet on along the Promenade d’ Anglaise. And we looked out on the same azure blue sea.

The hotel Negresco was built in 1912 by Henri Negresco, the son of a Romanian innkeeper. After service in the Romanian army, the young Henri left Bucharest for Paris. Then on to the Riviera, where he found success as director of the Municipal Casino in Nice. This gave him the idea to build a sumptuous hotel of quality that would attract the wealthiest of clients and appeal to the high-rollers that...

Today my daughter-in-law and I are focusing on the chaperone duties which we had scurried through that brief Covid let-up to perform. Our charges, my granddaughter Jane and her roommate Chloe, have finished their week of intensive study at the Princess Grace school, and we are on the spot to pick them up.

This is a nostalgic journey back to my childhood, since I am of sufficient age to remember the fairy tale romance of American film star Grace Kelly and Prince...

Well, no, I wasn’t actually with the great French novelist Dumas père. In reality I was with my food writer daughter-in-law Kelly, who had planned our fabulous Riviera escape. Our excuse was our “chaperoning” my granddaughter/Kelly’s daughter in her ballet intensive in Monaco. But it turned out to be something of an intensive for us as well, as we discovered writers and gorgeous food at every location.

We couldn’t have had a lovelier day to set sail westward along the incredibly blue Mediterranean for...

We were so fortunate. In late July of this year it seems that the planets aligned and a brief window opened after travel restrictions eased and before the Delta variant ramped up—and we managed to dash through like Alice through the looking-glass.

My granddaughter Jane had an interval between...

Photo: Basingstoke Gazette, Ophelia King

With world-wide attention, and sometimes controversy, focused on the importance of vaccinations these days, and with a new appreciation of their marvels as we see statistics of the Coronavirus pandemic falling dramatically in countries well supplied with serum, one gains a new perspective on the importance of medical science to our world.

What must it have been like before any sort of inoculation against disease was discovered? That thought...