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 […]

[Read more →]

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.

[Read more →]

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. […]

[Read more →]

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” […]

[Read more →]

  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, […]

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

Altea is amazing. Benidorm is appalling. Altea is a few blocks of 19th-century charm crowned by a 115-year-old church atop a hill. Benidorm is miles of urban sprawl built around “the most high-rise buildings per capita in the world”. And the amazing thing about this … is that these two cities are about five miles […]

[Read more →]