Cross-Cultural Insights into Health or How I Spent My Winter Vacation
Only an expatriate can understand the pleasure of returning home without having to be someone’s guest. There’s no place like home, of course, and...
Bomb Threat on the TGV
I shared a 4-seat section with a laid-back couple and their joyful, fidgety 3-year-old daughter. I had a window seat, riding backwards. The family and I had exchanged greetings in Paris as they settled into a seating arrangement whereby the woman sat across from me, the man to my left, and the child diagonally, with the warning from her mother not to donner des coups de pied au monsieur, that is, kick me.
Uncovering French Weapons of Mass Seduction
A man needs to be in love in order to think of the French capital as a romantic or sexy destination whereas a woman need only hear the word “Paris.” Another word that’s sure to get a woman packing is “naughty.” Put “naughty” and “Paris” together and you get Heather Stimmler-Hall's "Naughty Paris: A Lady’s Guide to the Sexy City."
Writing in cafés
No offense to writers who claim to get significant work done in Paris cafés, but that’s an urban legend as far as I can...
Still Life with Eiffel Tower
My friend Monique is tall, thin, recently single, and recently blonde. She’s invited me to a play at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, 8:30 curtain....
Natural expedition in Vendée or Still life with children
Given the choice between an afternoon with screaming kids and a nature expedition in flat, damp Vendee, south of the Loire by the Atlantic coast...
French cuisine in Philadelphia
Explorations in French cuisine in the City of Brotherly Love. A round-up of French restaurants in Philadelphia.
La Rochelle: A Winter Wanderbout in an Old Port Town, Part II: Day
The following morning is sunny and cool. I have breakfast in a café facing the port. I visit the Saturday morning market in and around Les Halles, the covered food market on Place du Marché. I enter the massive, graceless cathedral looking for a chapel of ship-theme ex-votos. Every port town has one. ..
La Rochelle: A Winter Wanderbout in an Old Port Town, Part I: Night
I am not a seafaring man. My ancestors took several billions of years to evolve from the deep; I see no reason to go back. But give me a safe old port town on a misty evening, even on a cold winter’s night like this, and I’ll wander about for hours as if looking for chance.