You have to look pretty hard to find color in the typical Parisian building but whenever I do, I feel like I’ve won the lottery. Mosaics, ceramics, brickwork: I love them all. These details are hard to photograph from street level so my apologies for the wonky angles. So just consider these pictures documentation, not [...]
A recent addition to the furniture of the Paris Metro has been the installation of electronic advertising screens. Although they throw light down the gloomy corridors, they also peddle the same asinine messages as the more traditional forms of underground publicity but in a more invasive manner, a fact that initially lead certain Metro users [...]
Mention Les Fines Gueules to someone who has been there, and the word “tartare” will come up almost immediately. So might the zinc bar and the pretty corner location in the 1st Arrondissement. But this is not an old-fashioned Paris bistro. For one thing, that tartare is anything but traditional. I call it tartare for [...]
Even though my sewing talent isn’t up to snuff (yet..), I do get a craft high just walking into the Parisian fabric stores. Last weekend my friend and I discovered the mother ship of French sewing houses: Tissus Reine. If there’s anything I like about tackling a new hobby, it’s all the “equipment” that goes along [...]
There has been a drastic jump lately in the number of foreigners getting robbed around the Abbesses/Sacré Coeur area. There is one group of five young men who usually corner a foreign couple and make them empty their pockets and give them their ATM card pin code. The others just plain old pickpocket tourists. But [...]
Hearing music in the street is pretty common in Paris, like in most cities. But it generally comes from bands or guitar players rarely from… (real) piano players! And though, here is what I just photographed at the Cadet Metro station. The interesting part is that it’s good marketing ; It works, people were fascinated [...]
We all strive to attain the effortless glam of Parisienne women, the je ne sais quoi style that they appear to wake up exuding. With that in mind, we decided to channel the clever chic of Paris fashion with this Catherine Malandrino jumpsuit—a complete outfit in one easy step! We added some structure to this look with [...]
As a young boy, I longed to live in the fantastic worlds of Jules Verne, to explore the depths of the ocean in the Nautilus with Captain Nemo. I had not told Philippa this, but as we set off to visit the Musée des Arts et Métiers (Museum of Arts and Trades) in the 3rd arrondissement, she [...]
When I was growing up, “French” was always my favorite salad dressing. Needless to say I was a bit dismayed to discover, upon moving to Paris in 1995, that there’s no similarity between the American version of “French Dressing” and the vinaigrette that is actually served. The French tend to use just oil and vinegar, [...]
In the town of Foix, “La rivière souterraine de Labouiche,” or the Underground River of Labouiche is the longest navigable underground river in Europe, and has been open to the public since 1938 (thanks to the adventurous men who spent 30 years exploring and mapping it). The tour takes you through 1.5 km of the river, [...]
