Archive for the 'Quiet Time' Category


A Second “Second Sex”

Anglophone feminists, rejoice! The new English translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s masterpiece The Second Sex was published in the UK this week by Jonathan Cape (with the American edition set for publication by Knopf in April 2010).
Viewed by many as feminism’s foundational text, Gallimard published The Second Sex in two volumes (to mixed reviews) in 1949.  It sold extremely [...]

In Praise of Eurolines

15 years ago, my first experience of Paris was the Gallieni international bus terminal in the basement of a 1970s shopping centre. I had said goodbye to my girlfriend that morning and was about to spend a year working in Hungary. I now had a 24 hour bus journey ahead of me and a couple [...]

Leaving Come, Coming Home

I bawled my eyes out on the plane ride back from New York this time around. Alone in the dark at 3AM. For exactly 76 minutes. I thought about my family and cried. I thought about my friends and cried. I thought about all the stoops in Brooklyn and Queens I sat on and cried. [...]

Steam Cleaning

O’Kari,  a traditional North-African hammam devoted exclusively to women, is my current favorite. Opened just four months ago in the newly trendy Montorgueil district, it has the perfect combination of luxurious pampering, beautiful setting, all-natural products, and authentic spa techniques perfected by Arab women for centuries that will have you glowing. When you enter, the friendly [...]

42 Things I Love About Paris

With a little time on my hands today, I sifted through my photos and made an album of the 42 Things I Love About Paris. If you have a similar album somewhere, send me the link and I will post it on The Paris Blog.

With Winterson, More is More

Is Jeanette Winterson writing about Paris a lot more frequently in her journalism, or is it just me? Her latest column for the Times is a bit of fairy dust about her love for Paris and Shakespeare and Co and how when we think we’re speaking French we may be saying something altogether different. This is followed [...]