Ladies and gentlemen, get your running shoes out and your boxing gloves on. C’est les soldes! Today marks the beginning of the fabled twice-annual deep-discount French sales. Fabled, you might ask? Let’s just say that even Cendrillion can find a dress to go with those glass stilettos as prices fall to rock-bottom over the 5-week [...]

If you’ve ever been to the South of France, I’m sure you were as impressed as I was with the starring role that the humble olive plays in the culture down there. Olive trees seem to grow wherever you look- not just in groves and gardens, but in schoolyards, along roads and even in supermarket [...]

Le French Boyfriend and I speak a bizarre mix of Franglish or Français – normally, he speaks French and I reply in English, which never fails to bring up some bizzaro language peculiarity. A few weeks ago it was a gorgeous, sunny day, and we were walking down the Ile St. Louis in search of [...]

Summer is here to stay, so what better idea than to scour Paris’s mysteries and lost nooks and crannies in a race against time? This Saturday 3rd July, the capital will be transformed into an urban playground full of treasure seekers, marking the start of the annual Great Paris Treasure Hunt. Organised by the City [...]

Saturday night, we decided to skip staying home on the couch to watch the U.S.-Ghana soccer match and instead headed out to Versailles to see the evening fountain spectacular. On Saturday nights during the summer, the gardens are not so much transformed as embellished with music, lights, fire features, and choreography, and it all ends [...]

Caroline Mignot, a French writer who I like quite a lot, recently wrote about this little wine bar in the 9th. “I’m surprised that I haven’t written about it before,” she said, and I know exactly how she feels. Autour d’un Verre is a place I’ve visited many times and one that I often recommend. [...]

The news on Saturday in Paris was… the annual Gay Pride parade.

More of de Gaulle! They installed a huge portrait of him on the Hotel de Ville building and it’s really impressive. What’s even more impressive is that this portrait is actually a mosaic. It made of 1038 other portraits, the ones of the Compagnons de la Libération, that is people who played a role in the [...]

Pretty much everyone assumes that after almost three years in Paris, all of us are fluent French speakers. And oh the disappointment when I tell them “no.” And oh the clucking when I mention that we put the kids in international school where all their courses (except of course French!) are in English. Let me [...]

Summer, is it really you? Are you here to stay? I felt your presence going to the party. As well as going home.