Joyeux Noel from Paris Christmas Eve in Paris is busy and festive. Rue de Rivoli and the department stores are heaving with people, wrapped up against the winter’s cold and rushing about doing last minute shopping for presents and food.!!! Tourists wander around in awe, snapping up photos of window displays and Christmas lights and …
Another glorious sunny, blue sky winters day in Paris and lucky for me because I intended to sit on the open air top deck of the Canauxrama boat cruise that leaves from Bastille at the Porte de Paris Arsenal and cruise along Canal Saint Martin to Porte de Villette. …
As a general rule of thumb, I take the metro but on the few occasions that I have taken the bus it was fun watching the world go by than avoiding eye contact in the metro. Today being Boxing Day, with the traffic not too bad I decided on the bus. However trying to find …
A Room with a View and a Beam One of the first things that I managed to do after arriving in my Paris apartment was to run into a beam. This may sound a little crazy but the said beam that runs from floor to ceiling, on an angle, between the only two windows in the apartment …
Nope, it isn’t any of that stuff, that is what I love about Paris. This is what I don’t like about Paris. I never look forward to it, in fact I dread it, I get emotional and anxious. I don’t like to think about it or talk about it. My last day in Paris. …
Parisians love their Sunday brunch, a long leisurely affair that can last for hours and can keep you fueled until dinner time. I experienced a number of firsts during the course of a long but lovely day today. Not that it is unusual when I am in Paris for this to occur, there …
This was my mission for the day. Two tiny buildings, sandwiched at a T-intersection on Rue Galande in Paris. I don’t venture over to this part of the left bank often, it might be the multitude of tourists or the kind of ‘je ne sais quoi’ that I can’t put into words but it feels like foreign territory to …
Paris Greeters is a great initiative. Local residents volunteer their time to take fellow visitors like myself around their neighbourhood and bestow a bit of culture, interesting facts and sites and warm Parisian friendliness. This is my third consecutive year to donate to the cause and learn more about the city of Paris through the eyes …
Peering out the window this morning, to see a sea of umbrellas, it helped me to decide what to do. A combination of a rainy day and running out of time prompted me to visit a temporary exhibition. I try to save museum visiting for rainy days or nights if I can. Most museums …
The plan looked like this, pop into BHV department store, blinkers on, no fashion shopping, buy a new memory card, escape unscathed and take the metro directly to Musée de l’Orangerie, hopefully avoiding queues to see the Frida Kahlo exhibition that is currently on display there. Nothing ever seems to go to plan in Paris …