We gather here today to recognize and affirm our place in the world. In our halting quest for peace, freedom, happiness, prosperity and the well-being of our loved ones, we gather not to walk lock-step towards a single destination, but to wherever our interests, whims and desires may lead us, without willful harm to others. Where are we? Where are we going? Let us consider:

You know you’re in Paris when:

… you’re on a bike, one foot to the ground, waiting for people to cross the street and for the light to change, and a man teeters over to you, drunk.He says, “I won’t ask you for a little change to buy something to drink.”
“Why not?,” you ask.
“Because you’re North African and you don’t drink.”
“And if I told you that I do drink?”
“Can you give me some change?”

You know you’re in southeast France when:

… you understand that the association of food and drink with place is what most marks market-based gastronomy.
Read here for the theory: Market Day in France.
Read here for the bulls, lemons, olives, figs, cheese, honey and wine: Market Day in the Southeast: Provences-Alpes-Côte d’Azur.

You know you’re headed somewhere in the so-called middle of nowhere when:

… your friends say, “Why are you going there, to raise sheep?”
France Revisited takes pleasure in revealing the somewhere of such nowheres, and there is nowhere more somewhere in Creuse, in central France, than the small town of Aubusson, world famous for its 500 years of tapestry-making.

You know you’re in Paris’s 10th arrondissement when:

… you’re following these bar-hopping footsteps in a sliver of the tenth.

***

Having recognized our place in the world and in order to better it, let us herald this new era, you are cordially invited to two inaugural events in Paris:

1. An inaugural cocktail walk with I DRiNK PARiS, a daily sip of the City of Light. Wed. Jan. 25, 6-8pm.
What is I DRiNK PARiS? I DRiNK PARiS explores wine, cocktails, beer, spirits, coffee, tea, hot chocolate and more and the people, pleasures and places that go with them. By the way, if you can take photos and tell a good story at the same time I DRiNK PARIS is looking for contributors.

2. An inaugural public reading of Paris Vignettes entitled “7 Writers Walk into a Bar.” Mon. Jan. 30, 7-8:30pm.
What are vignettes? Short pieces of writing that examine transformative moments of love, loss, joy and personal insight.
What is Paris Vignettes? A vibrant weekly writing workshop in… Paris.
On Jan. 30 Elizabeth Neylon, Christine Hennebique, Niamh Tixier, Alice Evleth, Patricia Wilson, Natalie Fynn and I read (in English) from our recent works. The reading will be held at upstairs at Falstaff, a café at 10-12 place de la Bastille, near rue de la Roquette. While admission is free and open to the public, attendees are each expected to purchase a drink.

Welcome to a new era on France Revisited.

Happy travels always,

Gary

Gary Lee Kraut
Editor, France Revisited
www.francerevisited.com
gary [at] francerevisited.com

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1. I don’t immediately type up my notes. They languish in notebooks that can contain observations, ideas and details on countless subjects for weeks, months, even longer, until I’m ready to use some, trash others and leave others to languish further.

2. I lose my notebooks. I left one on a plane in February when I arrived in New Jersey where I was to begin a lecture tour. The notebook contained notes for lectures, from an interview I’d conducted in Paris two days earlier and who know what else.

I started another notebook when I returned to Paris a month ago, and yesterday I lost that.

I was taking it with me when going to attend a lecture at the Museum of Jewish Art and History about the construction of 19th-century synagogues in the Marais. I placed the notebook—a green hard-covered notebook with a pen stuck into the spine—in the basket of a public bike, a Velib, and I specifically told myself to remember to take it with me when I parked.

I dropped the bike off at a station several blocks from the museum, then walked. As I approached the museum I began pulling things out of my pockets for their security purposes so as to place on the machine along with my notebook…

Damn! I’d left the notebook in the Velib basket. I ran back to where I’d left off the bike. No more than ten minutes had transpired since I’d parked, so I figured that if that bike was still there then the notebook would be too. Rounding the corner I was relieved to see that there was a bike where I’d left mine and that there was something in its basket. But as I closed in I saw that instead of it being my notebook with the green cover and the pen sticking in the spine there was a pile of pages torn from a notebook. On closer inspection I saw that the pages were filled front and back with my handwriting.

Across the street there was a man sitting in a van, looking at me as I looked at him. He had the expectant yet troubled expression of someone who’s trying to decide whether or not to make a confession.

Beside the van was a garbage can. I crossed the street and looked into the can. Not that I thought the notebook might be in there but I wanted to be close enough to simply turn to the man in the van—his window was partly open—and ask: “Did you see someone take a notebook from that bicycle basket?”

From his troubled expression I actually expected him to pick my notebook up from the passenger seat and hand it to me.

But what troubled him wasn’t my notebook by rather his French—it was sparse. He said: “He” (meaning someone) “take notebook go in street there, there” (indicating left and right).

“A thief,” I said, half-heartedly.

The man in the van shrugged. He’d seen worse.

I had too, but still! I’d been gone barely 10 minutes. Who would take a notebook from a bicycle basket and leave behind the used pages?

I was upset that someone had taken my notebook, upset at myself for leaving it in the basket, upset that I was going to miss the lecture since I now didn’t feel like running to the museum without a notebook and pen.

But I did have my notes. And I had a dozen empty notebooks at home, gifts from tourist officials, the covers marked with logos for Burgundy, Poitou-Charentes, Champagne La Marne, etc. And the thief wouldn’t have known that I’d only been gone a few minutes. He would have been walking down the street, seen a nice-looking notebook in a public bicycle basket, looked around for its owner and seen no one but a fellow in a van who would have shrugged helplessly.

The thief would have given a brief flip through the notebook to see if there was any indication who it belonged to, and finding none he would have thought it a shame to let a forgotten notebook go to waste. Skies were grey, it might rain, he would have thought, and then the notebook would be ruined for both finder and owner. And if it didn’t rain, and in the unlikely situation that the owner did return, then the owner would still have his foreign scribbles. So he tore them out, left them in the basket, and sauntered off down the street before turning left or right.

In that case, this was a respectable thief.

Come to think of it, he wasn’t a thief at all. He was a writer.

I went home and wrote the above. And while I had the momentum I decided to write up some of the notes on the loose papers I now had, beginning with the page entitled:

Notes for “April in Paris” France Revisited Newsletter announcing seven recent posts.

1. The Rooftops of Paris
In recent months the most attractive view over Paris has been from District Hall of the 9th arrondissement, where District Mayor Delphine Bürkli is spearheading the committee to present the rooftops of the capital as a candidate for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Read about that here.

2. The Giant Colon
One thing that France will definitely not get World Heritage Listing for is its pink blow-up colon, which you might have missed last week in Paris on Place de la Republique. If you feel that you missed something, you can see it here.

3. The Rising Edge of Paris
Meanwhile, journalist Corinne LaBalme, who lives in the Batignolles Quarter of Paris’s 17th arrondissement, puzzles over the construction of a 525-foot glass tower that will become the centerpiece of a 123-acre development on the northeastern edge of the city. Read more here.

4. French personal hygiene
In art news, Corinne also tells about a delightfully exhibitionistic exhibition running through July 5 in Paris’s Marmottan-Monet Museum that examines French personal hygiene (and lack of) through the ages. (Spoiler alert: Lots of dirty pictures!) Read more here.

5. Movie Review: Suite Française
Suite Française by Irene Némirovsky took the literary world by storm when it was first published in France in 2004, followed up with an English translation in 2006. Now comes the movie, which I review here.

6. International Jazz Day
In other UNESCO news, Paris has been selected to serve as the 2015 Global Host City for the fourth annual International Jazz Day, celebrated around the world on April 30. See how Paris takes center stage on Jazz Day here.

7. April in Paris
I know, I know, you’re as unlikely to attend that jazz concert as you are to have seen the Giant Colon. But from where you sit you can now listen to rendition of “April in Paris”—actually, nine renditions. Have a listen here.

And as you listen remember to hold your loved ones close… and your notebooks closer.

Happy travels always,

Gary

April 3, 2015

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Still, something has to be done with them, so two weeks ago I set the end of the year as my deadline do something with these pages torn from different size notebooks, these partially legible Post-its and other bits and pieces, odds and ends and scraps and fragments of text.

It was easy enough to clear the brochures and press kits that lie about the room (to the garbage for most), but some of this may be gold dust.

Late at night—always at night—I’ve been filing, processing, digitalizing or trashing them: knickknacks of ideas, pieces of intended articles, wise phrases that may or may not be mine, descriptions without objects, analyses without context, dialogues without place, places without event, restaurant reviews set aside before the waiter arrived, notes from interviews that fell flat, daydreams from the rails (I like writing on trains), conversations heard and overheard, half-finished vignettes.

A friend came over the other day. Can you tell the difference? I asked. He looked around the room. Well, it looks like you made piles.

But the piles then shrank, and now, the new year almost here, there’s only one small pile left. Only a handful remain.

June. Standing on my balcony. A couple seated at the single table on the terrace of the restaurant across the street. A man scrapes his plate repeatedly with his forks. He then switches plates with what must be his wife and starts scraping hers. “Hey,” my neighbor Mme C shouts from her window. “can’t you eat normally? Eat some bread if you’re still hungry.”

At a party I go into the kitchen to look for a corkscrew. The hostess is in there putting a pie on a plate. “Get out of here,” she says, truly distressed. “I hate having men in the kitchen.”

M’s restaurant recommendations: Ratapoil, rue de Faubourg Possonnière; KGB, rue des Augustins; (illegible), rue du Faubourg St Denis; Pierre Sang, rue Oberkampf.

Walking with a long-lost friend around Chatelet-Les Halles looking for a place to have lunch. We pass a bistro where I have a vague recollection of a fun evening at a table by the stairwell, though I can’t recall with whom and whether the food was any good. I suggest we go there. We have a great time catching up, but the food is horrible. I have a limp and chewy steak with greasy fries. He has tasteless duck. We share a small carafe of teeth-staining rotgut. I now remember the last time I was there. The food was horrible then too. I was with A. and G. We’d laughed about what a poor wine choice G. had made and agreed that I should choose next time.

Metro. A man holding a large can of beer tells a story to himself about the time his protagonist was accused of not paying for his coffee. In his story there is a Chinese man, an Algerian woman, a fat bartender, a man lying on the street. “He’s tired. He slept on the sidewalk. You almost stepped on him. He was by the side. You could see him.” As he speaks, the man’s eyes are fixed on the shoes of a fellow standing nearby, who then moves his feet to escape his stare.

Sully-sur-Loire. 1 of 27 chateaux Sully owned. Copy of tomb here, original in Nogent. Bombardment by Italians in 1941, by Allies in 1944 (to destroy the port). 80% destroyed. Joan of Arc was here. Ark of the Covenant, Germigny.

“Strasbourg mon amour” press conference. Strasbourg is now promoting itself as a Valentine’s Day destination to copy its own success as a Christmastime destination. Christmas Market dates to 1570. Massacre of Jews in Strasbourg on Feb. 14, 1349.

Everyone looks old at a funeral.

A 15-year-old boy hugs me at the end of a week-long tour I’ve been giving to a school group. “I love you,” he says. I’m touched and embarrassed and glad that the accompanying teachers didn’t hear. Then a giant of a girl, 16, hugs me and says that she loves me, too, and several others, mostly the girls, do the same. Saying they love someone is apparently their thing. The oldest of the boys, 18, laughs. “How come you don’t love me?” I ask. “I don’t need to tell you,” he says, “you know I do.”

There, done, the final scraps of 2014 have been processed… with you as my witness.

I am so looking forward to sharing 2015 with you.

Dec. 30, 2014.

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Tell a Parisian that you’re heading south into deep France, la France profonde, and, after warning you that you’ll miss Paris after one day, he’ll eventually concede that one can eat well there, mention some magnificent chateau or landscape and finally confess that he has fond memories of once visiting with a friend or lover or cousin. But tell him that you’re headed to the deep France of the north and he’ll look at you with complete bewilderment. His only recollection of France’s northern border is likely to be a collective memory of German invasions.

So when I told friends in Paris that I was going to the French Ardennes, an area that accompanies the Meuse River as it pokes into Belgian forests just west of Luxembourg, I got nothing but a blank stare followed by a stunned “Pourquoi?”

Actually, one friend had been Charleville-Mézières, capital of the French Ardennes. “There’s a beautiful square there,” he said. Still, he thought I needed a better reason to go.

I did: beer. For three days I would set out to meet producers and purveyors of craft beer in the area.

But before taking a swig I had to deal with the ghost of poet-cum-explorer Arthur Rimbaud.

Part 1 is found here.
Part 2 is found here.
Part 3 is found here.

Travel advice : Giverny, with images of Monet’s garden in October
When visitors without much interest in Monet follow the paths around his pond and through his garden they inevitably find them lovely. For those curious about the artist, his sustained form of Impressionism and his family life, the garden and lily pond are magnificent. But are Monet’s House and Garden worth the daytrip? This article explains the interest of adding a stop at the nearby village of La Roche-Guyon on a trip to Giverny or further into Normandy.

A clear view of Paris
The City of Paris has begun investing in the fight against love locks on its famous bridges by placing glass panels that bring back the stunning views that attracted people to place locks there in the first place.

Happy travels always,

Gary

Gary Lee Kraut
Editor, France Revisited

The post The October Issue appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

I did indeed take great pleasure in putting together the current issue of France Revisited, and I like to think that those who contributed to this issue enjoyed doing so as well, as will you in reading/traveling with us to four very different parts of France: Paris, Auvergne, the Riviera and the Loire Valley.

25 Paris Restaurant: A List Beyond The List

A 2-part article that discusses why so many travelers have the same restaurants on their list (part 1) and suggests 25 restaurants to expand that list (part 2), including recommendations kindly contributed by six Paris-based French and American food journalists and bloggers.

Moulins (Auvergne) and the National Costume Center

I travel deep in the heart of France to the little-known town of Moulins, which reveals the fabric of great theater at the National Costume Museum. This year the museum celebrates the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth with an exhibition of costumes from some of the bard’s most emblematic plays.

Le Ciotat: A Splash of Reality on the Riviera

Corinne LaBalme forgoes the Saint Tropez glitz-krieg and heads for the refreshingly quirky (and under-hyped) port of La Ciotat to enjoy great food, unspoiled beaches and affordable prices in one of the all-too-rare Mediterranean enclaves that’s escaped paparazzi pollution.

Blond Girl in Saumur: When Our Eyes Met for the Second Time

A photo/video-log from the Loire Valley in which I remember when travel was less about fooding and more about flirting, less about getting reservations and more about losing inhibitions, less about looking for recommendations and more about following your own nose.

Enjoy the read. Enjoy the travels.

Happy Labor (of Love) Day.

Gary

Gary Lee Kraut
Editor, France Revisited

The post Labor of Love Day appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Some tracks are naturally more trampled than others since the vast majority of visitors aim for what’s most famous and monumental. That leaves more elbow room for the return traveler venturing elsewhere. Even then, an American traveler might take a road that appears less traveled only to find that it leads to a village full of Brits. No matter—what counts is discovery to oneself rather than finding a place where no other English-speakers have ventured before.

Instead of “off-the-beaten-track” I prefer the terms “less likely” and “unlikely” to describe routes, destinations, sights and businesses that are less frequented by my fellow American travelers and residents.

This summer’s articles and images on France Revisited will largely be dedicated to such places. By unlikely I don’t mean that such places are inaccessible (some are in fact in Paris), nor that they’re obscure, but simply that American travelers and residents are unlikely to have them on their travel radar.

These places are less likely or unlikely for a variety of reasons: they aren’t generally on our usual travel routes, they haven’t received much attention from the English-language press, they’re overshadowed by a famous neighbor, etc.

I leave it to you to decide if you want to place these on your radar for your travels and explorations and culinary adventures. At the very least, by keeping an eye on the articles and images posted on France Revisited in the coming months you’ll have heard about them, which in itself makes them a bit more likely.

We begin with one very unlikely and, truth be told, undesirable place, a French prison, in Donna Elveth’s scarf-wearing Maximum Security Fashion.

That’s followed up with the Barefoot Photographer’s encounter with a lighthouse in Paris.

We dig deep into the origin of painting with a glimpse of a prehistoric cave.

We then return to Paris to ponder: Despite all the love we have for Paris, does Paris love us? An unlikely question to launch our examination of unlikely places.

Speaking of less likely touring, after organizing a bonding and moving, if likely, father-and-son tour of Normandy last week, I accepted the less likely challenge this week of trying to explain the Hundred Years War to American travelers while visiting lesser visited castles in the Loire Valley. That led me mention the Battle of Castillon (Gascony, Aquitaine) of July 17, 1453, famous to the French and infamous to the English, which marked the end of the “endless” series of conflicts during which those kingdoms and their partner provinces fought for control of France or its western territories. But no need to listen to me when you, the unlikely traveler, can go see the battle yourself, recounted and reenacted in a sound-and-light show at the battle site near Castillon-la-Bataille, 30 miles east of Bordeaux. The show, running through August 14, is a pleasure even for the English, who have clearly gotten over the loss of Aquitaine over 550 years ago since so many of them take pleasure in spending their vacations or retiring here.

Happy travels always, however likely or unlikely they may be.

Gary

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When advising travelers and travel agents in search of a personalized “recipe” with which to savor city and town, countryside and coast, I’m aware that each traveler is different in his or her interests, desires and available time.

France Revisited seeks its own subtle balance—between Paris and elsewhere in France and between the well-known, the little known and the unlikely—but without specific interests, desires and available time in mind. What’s essential in writing, accepting and assigning articles for France Revisited is making sure that the material is varied enough and unexpected enough to titillate travelers’/readers’ natural curiosity as they seek their balance on the road.

For a few weeks now I’ve been working on the “elsewhere” and the “unlikely.” I’ll begin posting those articles next week. In the meantime, the most recent articles on France Revisited serve as a Paris interlude before venturing far and wide.

Here, in the Paris Interlude Issue, you’ll find two articles written by the ever-informative Corinne LaBalme and two articles by me.

Fashion food alert!
“Don’t be seen with last year’s cream puff,” warns Corinne. In Paris haute couture extends all the way to the dessert trolley. Even a venerable institution like Angelina has to keep up with the trifle trends.

French-Japanese fusion of the artistic kind
Corinne also reports from an art gallery in the 8th arrondissement whose owner/curator Chozo Yoshii brings French-Japanese fusion to Paris and a Montparnasse artistic landmark to the shadows of Mount Fuji.

Cartier Foundation surveils 30 years of art collection
Questions of the art of surveillance and the surveillance of art are delightfully, profoundly and perhaps inadvertently explored in the 30th anniversary exhibition of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris’s 14th arrondissement, as explained in my review.

Jewelry: a hidden gem on rue de la Paix
Colors, flowers, historical tidbits, well-studied yet easy-going elegance: what sounds like a stroll through the Luxembourg Garden or a glimpse into the lobby of a palatial hotel is, in this case, an encounter with Isabelle Langlois in her shop along Paris’s runway for high jewelry.

Enjoy the read, enjoy the road!

Gary

The post The Paris Interlude Issue appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Last November I was designing an issue of France Revisited by gathering together an assortment articles and stories about Jews, Jewish sights and Jewish history, particularly in Paris. I thought I’d call it the Hanukkah Issue. That was to be followed by a Christmas/New Year Issue before I would head off on my East Coast lecture tour in January and February.

But then the parties started—the cocktail events, the tapas evenings, the teatime happenings, the association dinners, the afternoon interludes, the “I’m only in town for a couple of days” pleas, the holiday celebrations—and before I knew it Christmas trees littered the sidewalks of Paris, New Year wishes came and went, and then I was on the road in the U.S..

There, I plotted my return, considering material that arrived from contributors and other texts that I might write. Should I transform the planned Hanukkah issue into an Semitic Food Issue, a WWII Issue, an If I Were A Rich Man Issue, an Evolution of the Marais Issue? – for I had articles on all those subjects and more.

But our first ideas are often the best, and a look at the articles I had on hand led me back to the Hanukkah Issue – except that the candles have long disappeared. So let’s get down to basics and call this issue by its rightful name: The Jewish Issue.

Here are the 9 articles, interviews and stories that comprise France Revisited’s March Jewish Issue

1. Love and Latkes. Canadian humorist Melinda Mayor, the Menschette of Montmartre, sent this piece about the trials of being a latke-lover in Paris. Melinda has previous contributed a piece about the trials of motherhood in Paris.

2. Passover and the 11th plague. New York writer and filmmaker Max Kutner tells of his first Passover in Paris and an encounter with the 11th plague.

Two articles about wealthy Jewish banking families that have left their mark on Paris:
3. The Rothschilds of the 19th century: A Riches to Riches Story.

4.  The Nissim de Camondo Museum: A Glory and the Tragedy

Views, one personal, one collective, of WWII deportations and the Holocaust
5. An exclusive interview with Paul Niedermann, a Holocaust survivor, currently living just outside of Paris. His extraordinary story is told though a text and interview by Janet Hulstrand. Janet, you may recall, previously introduced readers to American poet James Emanuel.

6. The Deportation Memorial and The Shoah Memorial. A look at two memorials that merit a place on the list of every traveler, whether Jewish or not.

7. In search of a Jewish Quarter: Rue des Rosiers, the Marais and the Jewish Food Court of Paris.

8. Noshing in Nice: Bread and the Bagel. The ever-perceptive Daniele Thomas Easton went looking bread in Nice and came home with bagels. Readers may recall Daniele’s review of the movie Sarah’s Key.

You might also want to return to an older editorial about anti-Semitism and the traveler.

Read them all, learn, discover, travel, comment, enjoy!

Gary

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Yet within that silence came a steady stream of new readers clicking aboard as I met hundreds of Francophiles, citizens with passports, college students dreaming of travel abroad, and armchair travelers curious or passionate about one of the various topics of my talks: WWI and WWII touring in France, the history of wine in Burgundy and Champagne and the pleasures of touring there, understanding patrimoine (cultural heritage) in France, travel and travel writing beyond the clichés.

Toward the end of my East Coast road trip, I was pleased  as all get-out, both personally and on behalf of France Revisited, to learn that one of the articles published on this web magazine had just been awarded top honors as best culinary travel article written for the internet. The Gold Award, as it’s called, was for my 3-part article, Drome Provencale: Eat Like a Sixth Grader, Drink Like a Wine Enthusiast. This Gold is one of the NATJA awards given by the North American Travel Journalists Association (NATJA)  recognizing what the jury feels are the best articles published in print and on the web during the period from October 2012 through September 2013.

What’s especially gratifying about being honored for the Drome article is that it represents recognition by my travel media peers that one needn’t be a specialized food writer to write about culinary travel and one needn’t be a chronic foodie to appreciate the pleasures and insights of culinary travel. Wherever there is bread to break and glass to raise there is potential for a good story because the greater part of the experience lies outside the dish or the glass (as those who join me on organized Paris and France Revisited culinary and wine [and beer] adventures well know.)

Not quite Gold but also gratifying, my article Biarritz: The Surfing Lesson was a named a finalist in the NATJA Sports and Recreation category.

As sad as I was to leave the U.S. after 6 weeks on the road, I was happy to return to Paris. What traveler could ask for more when leaving home to come home?

Imagine then further pleasure of returning to Paris on a beautiful March day, wheeling my luggage toward my building, looking forward to further culinary, sports, recreation and other adventures in France, and coming across that surfboard standing on the sidewalk.

I take as a sign of a great new wave of articles, stories, and adventures coming my way… and yours.

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Though you’ll find some fine addresses in the four pastry-related articles of this issue, I didn’t set out to draw up a list of the best or newest pastry shops in Paris or the city’s most famous pastry chefs, but rather to explore various aspects of la dolce vita:

– A Paris Cupcake Diary, Featuring Macaroons, Too,

– ANZAC Biscuits, a Memorial Taste of War from the Battlefields of the Somme,

– Paris Street Talk: Gastronomy, Pastries and Wine on Rue de l’Abbé Grégoire and

– Angelina at 110 Pursues the Sweet Life in Paris and Beyond.

Along the way I got slightly sidetracked in Fast Food Improves on France’s Fast Train, but there’s a cup of hot chocolate there as well.

As if all that weren’t entrancing enough, I joined journalist Corinne LaBalme to visit a new boutique hotel with a magic theme, where we saw ourselves in some bathroom fun-house mirrors, met the enchanting decorator and fell under the spell of the card-trickery of the magician receptionist. Corinne then took out her magic pencil to write a hotel review, while I went off to visit Paris’s Magic Museum to add a brief P.S. to her text.

I’m somewhat saddened to see this Magical Pastry Issue end, but nevertheless ready to improve my diet. Not right away though, because my new-found credibility as a cupcake expert in Paris has landed me a chair at the judging table of Cupcake Camp Paris, which takes place on Sunday afternoon Nov. 24, with proceeds going to Make-a-Wish France. Cupcake Camp Paris may not get the mass attention and local investment of Batkid in San Francisco, but we take our moments of happiness where we can get them.

You can grab some informative happiness right now by reading the Magical Pastry Issue. Don’t overdo it though. Savor these articles like I have pastries over the past few weeks, one or two a day, with long walks in Paris in between. How sweet it is!

See here for information about how to join on a culinary and wine adventure in the spirit of France Revisited.

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