Category France
Paris, Day 5 – Opera Bastille: Cendrillon
The Cendrillon that we saw performed at the Bastille Opera House tonight ranks among my favorite performances ever. I knew I would like the music (I’d heard it a few years ago when I saw the Kirov ballet perform it), but I hadn’t known what to expect from Nureyev’s choreography: He set the story in 1930s […]
Paris, Day 5 – Foodie Crawl
How should you spend your last full day in Paris? You could (A) go shopping at the flea market; (B) cram in a few more of the must-see churches and museums; or (C) abandon your plans to do the foregoing in favor of tracking down the most delicious delicacies in the city. We chose option C. Eric Kayser BoulangerieKnown for bread and pastries. […]
Paris, Day 4 – The Artist
After our Thanksgiving dinner, we headed over to the nearest artsy cinema to see the new film The Artist. It’s a perfectly delightful movie, a tale that evoked both Singing in the Rain and Sunset Boulevard. Also, it’s silent, black-and-white, and French. I loved it. The glowing reviews I’d read in the New Yorker and the New York Times were […]
Paris, Day 4 – Le Louvre (highlights)
Visiting the Louvre is like an ant drinking from a firehose — the quantity and quality of the masterpieces is overwhelming. You could easily spend weeks in there. (And if you don’t bring a map with you, you might never get out.) Fortunately, Amanda and I had each “done the Louvre” during previous trips, so we […]
Paris, Day 4 – Deportation Memorial
In honor of the 200,000+ French Jews who were deported and killed during the second world war.
Paris, Day 4 – Sainte-Chapelle
The Saint Chapelle is one of my favorite places in Paris. Tucked away in the old castle complex on the Ile de la Cite, it was built in the 13th century and is where the royal family would go to church. You wouldn’t think anything of it from the exterior; the interior is mindblowing. Upper chapel Lower […]
Paris, Day 4 – Yellow Pants!
I saw men wearing purple, green and orange pants (in addition to the ubiquitous black, blue and brown), but as far as I could tell, I was the only one in yellow today! Amanda said they made it much easier to pick me out in a crowd…
A Moveable Feast (or Thanksgiving in Paris)
Ernest Hemingway called Paris a moveable feast — and on this American day of feasting, that’s exactly what it was for me (only Paris wasn’t actually moving, it was I who moved from feast to feast…). We started out with breakfast chez Paul. We had missed breakfast the past few days, in part due to our schedule, […]
Paris, Day 3 – Le Musee Rodin
The Musee Rodin is one of my favorite places in Paris. The grounds are beautiful and the artwork wonderfully curated. His sculptures have a humanity and emotional poignance that touch me the way no other sculpture does — I feel like I’m witnessing creation when I look at his work. Les six bourgeois de Calais For those […]
A More Gentlemanlike Manner 