You’ve been in Paris for weeks and the one thing you miss is going to the theater. You long to see one of the many plays in town, but your French isn’t exactly up to par. Sitting in a room for two hours listening to actors in a language you don’t understand isn’t what you [...]

The most romantic walk in Paris might be up in the 11e arrondissement along the Canal Saint Martin. Wander across a couple of the arched bridges between Quai de Jemmapes and Quai de Valmy in the evening twilight and drop in at the Hotel du Nord for a kir. This bar/restaurant has the cachet of [...]

The 10th arrondissement is what many French people would still call populaire - which means a “working class” and diverse area. Our street from the very first day was a fascination to me. Each day there were groups of young guys standing around. They didn’t speak French and they seemed to be from somewhere in the Middle [...]

We’re getting ready to take off to spend the holidays in the U.S. so we’ve been frantically buying gifts and stocking stuffers. We came across these kitschy boxes of liqueur-filled chocolates. Unlike those little sugar bottles filled with God knows what liqueurs (we got those too!), these use dark chocolate without the sugar crust, they [...]

In the house where I grew up there was a reproduction of a Claude Monet painting on the wall; “Les Coquelicots à Argenteuil” a simple, bucolic creation that the painter produced in 1873. I had never visited France then, and this picture provided my vision of how the country might be. I knew that Argenteuil [...]

This made me laugh. The French have adopted the English term, “brunch” but as far as I know, there’s no meal called “slunch.” Actually my favorite creative use of English by the French is “relooking” which means remodeling when applied to a building or makeover when applied to a person. Say that with your best [...]

Christmas windows are up! See the full gallery at Eye Prefer Paris.

Saturday afternoon found me wandering in a small part of the 20th between Menilmontant and Jourdain. I took rue Cascade over to rue de la Mare where I ventured into Beau Travail, a studio/storefront of several young French designers featuring printed T-shirts, handmade purses, lamps, jewelry and a few other small items. I read their blog [...]

I once met a flight attendant who amazed me by recounting how she slept easily on her Boston-Asia routes, in between attending to customers.  When she arrived at her destination, she said, she usually spent the day shopping or sightseeing. Part of me didn’t believe her and part of me wanted to strangle her. I [...]