Beating Winter, and COVID, in Cape Town
Last November, desperate for sun and warmth as we faced another grim, dark winter in Paris, Charlie and I booked a late-January trip to Cape Town. The next day, officials in South Africa announced they had discovered a new and highly transmissible COVID-19 variant...
A Match Made in Paris Loses its Spark
Le poids des mots, le choc des photos (The weight of the words, the shock of the photos) – Paris Match slogan I have been facing an existential crisis: Whether to resubscribe to Paris Match magazine. This is the low point of a 25-year relationship with what...
Sisters Among the Yams and Couscous
Even though I like to write about Paris's ethnic neighborhoods, a recent walk showed me that's not really the right term. It implies boundaries and separation, when in fact many flow into each other, almost without warning. In three-plus hours, my sister Christine and...
You’ve Never Seen the Paris Shown in This Movie
“Let’s walk around the 13th arrondissement,” said my sister Christine. What a good idea! Even though I gravitate toward Paris's funkier neighborhoods for my blog-reporting walks, this one was mostly unknown territory for me. But Christine had recently moved there for...
It’s a Dog’s Paris
Let’s get one thing straight: The sidewalks of Paris are not littered with dog poo. Hefty fines have curtailed most déjections, as they are called. A while back, a Paris woman who not only failed to clean up after her two Jack Russells but also insulted the cops who...
Brrrraving Spain on Horseback
This is a departure from my usual post topics, but I hope the appeal is universal. Ignore it only if you don’t like any of the following: Spain, wine, adventure, mountain views, gourmet meals or horses. This riding vacation was a year and a half in the making. We –...
A Country for all Seasons
I grew up in a country that had four seasons, and later lived in Canada, which locals say has two seasons: winter and construction. Neither of those experiences prepared me for France, which has seasons not just for weather but for produce, school vacations, sales,...
Guest Post: My Hair-Raising Commute Across Paris
My sister, Dr. Christine Swardson Olver, is spending four months in Paris doing canine cancer research, her second spell as a scientist in France. She has already mastered the place, or at least the transportation part. By Christine Swardson Olver I decided to live...
France Finally Gets COVID Right
I recently returned from the U.S., where the talk was of breakthrough infections, vaccine reluctance, rising cases and unmasked citizens coughing on the masked. It was a relief to get back to France, which, after some false starts, seems to have gotten the balance...
Me and My French Butcher
We have a winner in the Locate-the-Paris-Rooftops contest! See below. * * * * * * * * * * “Have your butcher.” Those three words in a recipe used to bug me no end when I lived in the U.S. How could I have my butcher do anything when the meat came in a sterile plastic...