It’s not just Christ’s birthday that’s just passed–it’s The Paris Blog’s! Many thanks to the readers and especially to all the contributing bloggers. Happy New Year to you all.

It is much easier to contemplate progress from a distance. In this case a distance of 10,000 miles. Now that I am safe at home in San Francisco I can reflect on my experience thus far cooking for 7 months in Paris at a 3-star restaurant…
I know that if I was to die and go […]

Since Christmas Eve, the Eiffel Tower is sporting a strange new green appendage.
>click here for the full picture

I’ve just got home from Christmas with the folks. The Eurostar back was interesting - the general feeling of a journey totally depends on when you’re travelling. For this trip, it seemed mostly French and British expats returning home - not many tourists at all. The train struggled on the UK side, and the announcer […]

Haxo Station (a dedicated visitor to Paris Daily Photo) pointed out an interesting piece of news yesterday about the action taken by the Enfant de Don Quichotte association who installed dozens of tents on the Canal Saint Martin to attract people’s attention to the plight of the homeless. Apparently, this lead the government to take […]

Tartiflette is this utterly wonderful, heavy winter dish, made up of cream, potatoes, onions, bacon or lardons, and reblochon cheese. Pure heavenly heart attack on a plate. There’s is no need for one to consume this dish unless one has just returned from an eight hour hike along a snowy mountain trail. And even then, […]

If hell is other people, as Sartre wrote, then the new photo book The Light of Paris is heaven. Jean-Michel Berts’ black-and-white images of the city, taken at dawn with a 4 x 5 camera, are devoid of humans. But not of humanity. Stacked café chairs take a breather before opening hour; a motorcycle […]

In the states you see the same stores over and over again. If you were to walk from Washington Heights down to Battery Park City, you would pass God knows how many Gaps, Starbucks, Barnes & Nobles and Perfumanias along the way. What American mall is complete without a Limited, Bath & Body Works and […]

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Don’t attempt to adjust your knobs on the television. The images that you see are real. It is not a fun-house mirror. You are not in The Twilight Zone.
You are on avenue George V, one block from the Champs Elysees.
Paris is so creative with scaffolding covers. This one’s over […]

Today we moved some boxes and other junk from the office into the cave,or cellar beneath the building. This was the first time I’d been down there, and Pascal, who originally found the offices for us, lead the way.
The timer on the cellar light had a ridiculously short fuse, and several times we were plunged […]