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.
The Electrician
The back table by the kitchen at Kasaphani, Paris’s premier Greek Cypriot restaurant, is reserved for family and friends. Tony, the oldest of the...
Writing without gloves
On a cold Paris winter day, as the ice thickens on Canal Saint Martin, the writer takes off his gloves to work.
Christmas in Paris is but a memory
It's the rare Paris winter in recent years when Canal Saint Martin freezes over. But abandoning Christmas trees on the street (or in this case the canal) is a post-holiday tradition in Paris.
It may be January but it’s still Paris
A rare view of ice on Canal Saint-Martin.
Winter sky over gray rooftop.