Saturday, November 3, 2007
It’s about stopping, reading the paper or your guidebook, getting off your feet. Or off life’s merry-go-round. Order and sip. Maybe you don’t do anything else. I haven’t bought a single Herald Tribune (the English-language newspaper sold here) because I usually want to shut out the world’s goings-on. I’ll admit it’s been quite blissful ignoring the […]
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I had heard stories about my father Glenn’s year in Meudon, France, since I was a kid. He’d gone with his parents–my grandparents Helen and Karl Grossman–to this southwestern Parisian suburb in October 1928. My grandfather had come to study music for a year with Nadia Boulanger (her picture is below) at the Paris Conservatory, and my […]
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Thursday, November 1, 2007
Parisians had a few pumpkins, skeletons, and witches in shop windows the last few weeks, but I wouldn’t say they celebrate Halloween. But November 1, All Souls’ Day or Day of the Dead, is a major holiday. Today’s November 1 and it wasn’t raining, so it was a good day to visit Cimetiere du Pere […]
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Wednesday, October 31, 2007
A place in Paris is a pedestrian walking area, like a square or large patio. Sometimes a place is hard to get to, such as the Place Charles de Gaulle at the Arc de Triomphe, which you enter and exit through an underground passage. France’s Tombe du soldat inconnu (Tomb of the Unknown Soldier) contains the remains […]
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Tuesday, October 30, 2007
My list of adult fiction set in Paris continues here. Where possible, I’ve listed the publication date of the book. JAMES, Henry. The Ambassadors. JOHNSON, Diane. Le Divorce (1997), L’Affaire, and Le Mariage (2000). KOEN, Karleen. Through a Glass Darkly (1987). Caution: there is another book by the same title by Gaardner and the film by […]
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I’ve compiled a list of adult fiction books set in Paris from information from book clubs, publishers’ lists, book blogs, and my own reading. These are alphabetized by the author’s last name. I haven’t separated them into genres, nor do I sort the books as great or ho-hum or truly awful. When possible, I’ve indicated the original publication […]
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Ernest Hemingway wrote that you carry memories of Paris with you as a moveable feast. But a moveable feast can bring on ants, thunderstorms, food poisoning, and other realities. Living in the French capital is sometimes that kind of difficult picnic. All this walking kills your feet. Tourists walk for hours a day. Even if you take the metro, […]
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Saturday, October 27, 2007
I recently took Les Cars Rouges (a get-on-and-off red tourist bus with open seating on top) to the Eiffel Tower. My first move was to consume the best ham-and-cheese crepe in Paris at a street stand (see crepe preparation below). The crepe master pours the batter onto a circular black griddle and evens it out dragging a special T-shaped […]
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Cafe de Flore and Les Deux Magots are famous because of who used to consume food and drink there. Long-gone waiters at these cafes served up libations to Breton, Hemingway, Picasso, Camus, Sartre, and de Beauvoir. The cafes now attract lots of tourists and many philosophy and English majors. I even saw an editor soliciting work outside Deux Magots with manuscripts spread […]
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Wednesday, October 24, 2007
I had been searching for a certain tiny shop at 6, rue d’Echaude in the Latin Quarter for weeks. The shop features items from the not-just-for-children’s book Le Petit Prince. Sadly, the shop has changed idols. Number 6 is now “Pixi & Cie,” featuring books, cards, and dolls of the Belgian comic character Tin Tin. On my recent visit, […]
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