Imagine window-shopping for food in an upscale neighborhood. Walking past dozens, hundreds of displays of the tastiest, most mouth-watering comestibles — meat, fish, cheeses, chocolates, vegetables. It would be a form of torture. Now flip it. You are doing the same window-shopping of gourmet foods … but you are allowed — nay, encouraged — […]

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The great thing about Paris is that you don’t have to do much of anything to feel its effects. You walk out the door, sit on a bench with a baguette, watch the world go by … and you are having more fun than you will 99 percent of the time back in the real […]

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I would still rather be in Paris than just about anywhere, but for those of us who live near the tropics, we do have one … oh, let’s call it mild complaint … about Paris in late November/early December. It’s dark. It’s also a bit cold. By Abu Dhabi/UAE standards, most definitely cold. Around 50 […]

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We interrupt this Paris travelogue to weigh in on Tim Tebow. Yes, I may be the last person holding U.S. citizenship to be heard on the topic. In part, that’s because so many others reacted so quickly and so vociferously that I felt no need to join the shouting. I like Tim Tebow. I admire […]

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Has any city been the backdrop (or even the star) of more movies than has Paris? New York, perhaps. London probably is a distant third. Whether it is because Paris so often ends up on the big screen (Hey, that’s the street in the 7th where my friend used to live!), or because people here […]

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Neighborhood markets are an important part of life in Paris, as anyone who has been here more than a week can attest. The city sponsors 65 outdoor markets, according to franceguide.com. City workers show up at wide spots on the streets (often, the medians, but sometimes the whole street) the night before the market is […]

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Now it can be told. We skipped right past any sort of celebration of Thanksgiving Day, in Abu Dhabi, because we were hoping to pull together something in Paris two days later. Yes, it is possible to buy a turkey in Paris, and to round up most of the ingredients necessary for the infamous “fixin’s” […]

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Vacation days to burn before the end of the year, a low, late-autumn fare … the Salon des Vins des Vignerons Independants by noon of the first day. So has our 2011 stay in Paris begun. A valuable aspect of living in the UAE is proximity to places you might not get around to visiting, […]

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I am back in Abu Dhabi but still talking to people around me about Beirut and my three days there, which were jammed with enough events and anecdotes and revelations to have felt like three weeks. Before we go any further, let’s link to a discussion that a Beirut-based blogger told me about, a discussion […]

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I believe many of us like to think we’re glass-half-empty people. Doesn’t a sort of world-weariness make us seem, oh, more sophisticated? More realistic? Cock-eyed optimism … doesn’t the “cock-eyed” tell us all we need to know about optimists? Certainly, in the news biz, where we document famine and pestilence and death and destruction, optimists […]

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