by Anne Swardson | Feb 2, 2022 | France, South Africa, Travel
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... 
by Anne Swardson | Jan 19, 2022 | France, magazines
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... 
by Anne Swardson | Jan 4, 2022 | France, Paris
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... 
by Anne Swardson | Dec 6, 2021 | France, Paris
“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... 
by Anne Swardson | Oct 20, 2021 | food, France
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,... 
by Anne Swardson | Oct 4, 2021 | France, Paris, Parisbiking
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...