If you’re anything like me, you barely give Paris’ bouquinistes a passing glance if you happen to be strolling along the Seine. Assuming that they are selling overpriced art nouveau posters and street sign magnets to tourists, you keep your eyes forward, and may even cross the street to avoid the hassle of dodging the [...]

It’s official. Summer is over. The traffic was murder over the weekend (or so I heard). People are back in their offices and the shops are all open for business. School starts Wednesday for the big kids, Thursday for the little ones. New notebooks, pencils, backpacks, school shoes, the works. The guys living on the [...]

Some time while all of France was en vacances, a moving truck pulled up at pretty nice place on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Mr. Sarkozy’s new neighbor? Charles Rivkin, freshly confirmed as U.S. ambassador to France. An entertainment executive, whose stint as CEO of the Jim Henson Company generated some unfortunate comparisons between diplomacy and [...]

It’s tanfest, that time when everyone in Paris comes back from their long summer vacations and competition begins for the best vacation tan.
I went to visit Big Fry’s school to find out the teacher’s name and bumped into “Tan-Sophie” (real name: Anne-Sophie), one of the French moms who looks tanorexic. Apparently, questioning someone’s tan factor [...]

The Fondation Pierre Berge - Yves Saint Laurent exhibit on Russian Dress is filled with wonderful details, in a carefully designed space complete with lighting, and scenic elements which evoke the idealized world of the Russian peasant. I was taken in by the sheer splendor of this beautiful exhibit space: Sheaves of wheat decorated the room, [...]

It’s still standing. Somehow. There’s not a shard of glass left on the structure and the doors were removed a long time ago. It’s no longer a shelter, no longer a square metre of space you could go to talk without distractions and yet it is still functional. Pick up the receiver and after a [...]

The shops on rue Caulaincourt, a street that snakes from the 9th arrondissement to one of the toniest sections of 18th, houses some of the most charming owner-run shops in the city. Between La Cave Caulaincourt, which features the obscure Delahaie champagnes (the best value on bubbly, IMHO), and Par Ici Les Fromages, the  cheese [...]

 
I’m back in France after the longest time spent in England since I left twenty five years ago. My two and a half months in the motherland has left me dazed and confused and as far as this blog is concerned, mute for weeks on end. In writing about my understanding of France, I have [...]

Yesterday when I got home from work I checked my mailbox as I normally do. Because I love getting mail I was excited to see several letters waiting for me in my mailbox. One piece of mail that caught my eye was wrapped in a blue plastic wrapping with the emblem of the Republic Francaise [...]

The Louvre and Versailles are not the only châteaux in the neighborhood. While not in Paris proper, Château de Vincennes is just a hop, skip and a jump away; a few metro stops on the line 1 direction Chateau de Vincennes.
Once a hunting lodge developed in the 11th century, ever the construction king, Charles V [...]