Champagne is a beverage many of us will happily go out of our way to sample. Yesterday, we went about 100 miles east, to Epernay, one of the capitals of the Champagne wine region, to taste some of the local bubbly and admire a tidy little town built by the manufacture of sparkling wine.

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The Grantland sports/pop culture website, inspired and formerly led by Bill Simmons, was shut down today by ESPN. Here is the ESPN media release on it. Some media reports suggested the site lost gobs of money, which is easy to believe given the number and competence of its many contributors, which could not have been […]

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The bistro historically has been the backbone of the Paris dining experience. Smallish, usually unpretentious, serving traditional French food in all its glorious buttery/caloric majesty. Some believe the bistro is in trouble, and numerous stories along these lines have been written over the past decade. Here is one from 2006. Here is another, from 2010. […]

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Paris has a fine transportation system. Bus lines, the Metro, and the RER rail lines crisscross the city, significantly reducing the need for a personal car or an expensive cab. The bus-Metro-RER troika was inadequate in one significant sense: They sent spokes out into the city, and then the suburbs, but there was no “wheel” […]

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  Paris must be the global epicenter of this — the enormous exhibit for marvelous food and drink. Four years ago, we were here at the same time as the salon of independent wine producers, and wandering through that was a kick in the pants. Later in 2011, we visited the Salon Saveurs food fair, […]

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This is something I love about France, and Paris, in particular. The bakeries. A trip to the boulangerie is a treat.

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Paris has two major American churches and, curiously, they are only about 800 yards apart, with the Seine River filling much of the gap. We checked out the American Cathedral on a Sunday evening back in 2011, and today we had a look at the American Church in Paris — and the experiences were markedly […]

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For at least four decades, I have been wearing the Stan Smith model of the Adidas tennis shoe. Going back to my early days in college. Perhaps you know the Stan Smith. The tennis shoe. (As opposed to the tennis player, for which the shoe was named, a world No. 1 in 1972 and a […]

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A curious reality concerning the 11th arrondissement, where we are staying: It is the most densely populated quartier in Paris but it has very few major … anythings. Landmarks, stores, parks. So, if you want a bit of greenery on a cool cloud-covered afternoon, you very likely will make a zig-zagging trek up into the […]

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So, here we are again, in the City of Light, nearly all of that light generated by electricity, given that Paris has been sunk in a not-atypical late-October cloud of gloom. But, still … We landed at gray Orly, after taking the Transavia flight from sunny Valencia. Transavia is one of Europe’s dozens of budget […]

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