This photo gallery is put up by one of those sites who live for photo galleries, then bombard you with ads and links (and slow response times) as you drew to negotiate the photos. So, fair warning. But this one alleges to represent 19 photos that could have been taken only in Dubai. After six […]

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Thankfully, sometimes not-good things happen to not-very-good people. Saudi Arabia’s football federation threw around its weight to mess with a 2018 World Cup qualifying process that should not have yielded to their demands and machinations. They got their way everywhere but on the pitch, where they were held to a scoreless draw tonight by Palestine […]

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Got to love airline upgrades. We had enough points with Qatar Airway‘s alliance that we could afford one upgrade from economy to business on the QR40 flight from Paris to Doha in the A380 super jumbo. It is like moving from squalor — among the 400-plus economy customers packed elbow to elbow on the lower […]

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Anyone who has been to Paris several times knows it is more like 20 cities than one. Twenty is the number of arrondissements inside the peripherique, the circular roadway that divides Paris from its suburbs, and each of those 20 has its own personality — and sometimes several personalities, as you move about inside the […]

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It can happen, if you don’t have redundant systems in place. Separated in a Metro station, a realization a few minutes later, one person with a cell phone and an address for a meeting, the other person with a key to the apartment. And never the twain shall meet. This is how we managed to […]

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It was 10 months ago that terrorists entered the offices of the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo and killed 11 people, most of them journalists, including the editor in chief. A 12th person was killed nearby. It was a few days ago that I realized the offices of Charlie Hebdo were in the Paris arrondissement […]

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France is approximately the size of Texas, so it takes a while to get wherever it is you’re not. Planning is key. Detailed, to-the-minute scenarios involving four people, a Westie and four forms of conveyance. What could go wrong? All sorts of things. In annoying, embarrassing, silly ways. Here are 12.

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In recent years, Paris Saint-Germain by some distance has become the most formidable soccer club in France. And now it has aspirations to win a first European continental club title. Paris, then, ought to have been in a froth tonight, as PSG played at 10-time-European champion Real Madrid, with the winner all but guaranteed a […]

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I am comfortable in saying I lived at least 40 years without owning a scarf. As well as never wearing one. You grow up in Southern California, and “scarf” was a word used almost exclusively as a synonym for “eat” — with a undertone of bolting food, perhaps messily. But now? In Paris, hardly anyone […]

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What happens after you have been to Paris more than a few times … you no longer have the same plan of attack. The Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Sacre-Coeur … you’ve done them, and probably more than once. Instead, you might take a look at a Paris activity you missed the first “x” number of […]

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