It’s an exchange from the 1974 movie “Blazing Saddles.” Always makes me smile. Sheriff Bart: “Can’t you see it’s the last act of a desperate man?” Townsman: “I don’t care if it’s the first act of Henry the Fifth.” So, in our last social act in Paris, here early on the morning of Aug. 21 […]

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This was the day. The one in your imagination. Or your memory. On your movie screens. When Paris is sunny and beautiful and lively and almost dream-like in it scrumptious goodness and magnetic appeal and all those recreational options, options, options! For two weeks here, it was mostly cloudy. Even rainy. Which suited a couple […]

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I was struck by this last year, and I am again: Paris has to be the world’s biggest city that cares almost not at all about team sports. For that matter, nearly the whole of France has escaped the maladie that is sports fandom. Which may actually be healthy, as well as unique. But it […]

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Yes, I said it about two weeks ago. “Even I’m ticked off at Brett Favre.” This was after all the reports, early this month, of him calling officials and players of the Minnesota Vikings and telling them that his ankle wasn’t sound enough for him to play … that he was going to have to […]

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This isn’t about sports. Nor journalism. Nor sports journalism. (OK, wait. A tipsy Englishman sitting next to us, who decided to tell us about hedge-fund managers he has known, conceded to being a fan of Newcastle United. I expressed my deepest condolences. He thanked me.) What this is really about … is just food and […]

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Almost 11 months ago I did a blog post that generated as much hate mail as anything I’ve written at this address. Vile stuff. Unprintable. I posted eight comments, but another 20-plus I did not. Not because I didn’t like the criticism (I read them all), but because I didn’t feel like redacting the vulgarities. […]

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Paris seems to be about eating as much as anything. Sure, culture, history, fashion, ideas, government, all those matter. But most of them seem to amplified or explained or resolved … over a slow, leisurely meal. I am no gourmand.  But I know what I like, and this is what I look forward to eating […]

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“Marais” means swamp, in French (perhaps related to “marsh” or “morass” in English?), and because the ground was less-than-solid, in previous centuries, Le Marais was one of the last parts of the central city to be developed. Now, curiously, it is one of the oldest parts of Paris, with the sort of narrow, short, non-Haussmannian […]

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According to weather.com … the forecast high temperatures (in Fahrenheit) the next 10 days, including today, in Paris: 69, 72, 67, 65, 69,  71, 72, 74, 75, 74. And the highs in Abu Dhabi: 109, 108, 107, 110, 111, 110, 110, 110, 109, 109.

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It can be done. I proved it tonight. Not every trip is wonderful and not every experience within it is grand. Many of us feel a sort of compulsion to turn all our travel endeavors into one long run of good news and great experiences. But they are not. Of course. Herewith, a brief explanation […]

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