This is another local park where I can walk with Bébé Têtard. It sits on the edge of Bois de Boulogne and just up the road from the local Carrefour supermarket. The garden was originally created under order of Louis XV in 1761, and was later transformed between 1895 and 1898 by Jean-Camille Formigé to [...]
Yesterday saw a ravenous and much needed storm in Paris, lasting several hours, and soaking any tourist who hadn’t taken shelter in a museum or bistro. This past fortnight has been quite hellish. When the sun comes it takes a couple of days, but consecutively hot days superheat the pavements, streets and courtyards, which in [...]
I finished working yesterday lunchtime, and took a lazy afternoon in Edmond de Rothschild park in Boulogne-Billancourt (same suburb as the Albert Khan park I wrote about previously). I wanted to rendez-vous with my old friends the coypu, and within minutes of arriving Papa Coypu jumped out of the pond to say hello… Well, hello [...]
Albert Kahn is one of the prettiest parks in Paris (well technically Boulogne-Billancourt, but you can still get there by bus or metro from Paris même). Considering it’s almost on my doorstep I haven’t visited it nearly enough (only once prior, in 2008). My favourite park is still Bagatelle in Bois de Boulogne (especially when [...]
Why is it we do not hear the term illegal or legal expat, and is there really any difference between the terms expat and immigrant? I’ve pondered on this issue previously, but decided to take the time to think about it in a little more depth.
An expatriate comes from the Latin ex patria – ‘to [...]
Three weeks back, I returned from a visit to the UK and started seeing those stereotypical ‘Onion Johnny’ blue striped tops. Initially I thought the tourists were flooding in, but then the more I ventured around Paris, the more I saw, and those wearing them were actually French. Over the past three weeks this latest [...]
Whilst Madame Grenouille took care of Bébé Têtard yesterday, I visited the Pompidou Centre in Paris with her opera singer friend, to see Lucian Freud’s painting exhibition. Now aged 88 and described as a living master; I’d seen one or two paintings by Sigmund Freud’s grandson in the UK, but never so many of his [...]
Looking out of the window of the Alsace restaurant, where I sampled my first proper Choucroute Garnie, lies Paris’ oldest kitchen shop – ‘E.Dehillerin’, now 190 years old. On my full belly of fermented cabbage, Mme. Grenouille (who once upon a time went to catering school, and also worked in one of the Eiffel Tower’s [...]
Choucroute comes from Alsace – that little elongated, squashed up blob on the right of France, squeezed up tightly against Germany and poked from behind a little by Switzerland. I’d tried a little sauerkraut from the market, but was taken to an Alsacian restaurant in Paris for the full experience. Of all the foods I [...]
If you were to take a recent visit to Paris’ Orsay Museum, you might be forgiven for thinking you’ve entered the museum of erotica. Courbet’s L’Origine du monde, has long been displayed here: an unbashful painting of the female genitalia, whose focal point doesn’t leave much to the imagination. However, perhaps the French are a [...]
