Latest from Parisian Blogs

I’m fed up of being pregnant. ‘I honestly feel like time has slowed to a crawl,’ I moan to The Boy as I toss and turn, trying to find a comfortable position in bed. ‘I swear, this has been the longest seven months of my entire life…’ ‘Not long to wait now,’ he replies, doing his [...]

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Jack was finally born at 41 weeks and 4 days on Monday 2 November, on the night of the full moon. His birth was spookily similar to Tadpole’s. I found myself in the same salle d’accouchement at the Maternité des Lilas where my daughter had been born six year earlier and, like his [...]

I got an email from a reader the other day enquiring after my well-being and suddenly realised I hadn’t blogged in over a month. The truth of the matter is that I’m fine – indeed, we all are – but the inclination to blog, which has been on the wane for some time, seems to [...]

In honour of official ‘French Kissing’ publication day, I just wanted to answer a lot of the queries I’ve been receiving on facebook and by email about the novel’s availability abroad. As things currently stand, I only have a Doubleday Canada release date – March 2010. The Penguin UK version should be available [...]

Well, what can I say if not these two words that I used so many times here: thank you. I've not been able to read all your comments yet - nor to visit all these blogs that celebrated the anniversary with what is now worldwide(!) known as the "Tenin perspective", but I will this weekend. Tonight I took a photo of this billboard- which is currently used for our coming elections - and took the liberty of removing the original posters to replace them with this simple word: merci! Lots of love from Paris dear visitors...

In the latest issue of the French Marie Claire Maison, I came across some really beautiful work by Les Filles de Factuer, hanging curtains and screens made up of twined, colorful plastic. I went to look at their website this morning and discovered that it is in fact a French organization whose ...

“Hello,” I said with a bright smile. “I am M's mom. She is so thrilled your daughter invited her to the birthday party. She'll be very happy to join you. Oh, my name is Sylvia.” I rattled this off to the other mother in my nearly fluent French, my hand ...

Good news! The American Library in Paris, an expat membership  institution, has just launched Browser, a blog covering expat subjects and literary news and events (and not just ones at the Library itself). An inaugural post announces an event worth planning for: Since the mid-1990s the Library has been fortunate to ...

The other day, a busy and rainy Sunday afternoon, as Gui and I were leaving McDonald's to get on with the day, a young boy stopped me and asked me if I had a euro. We were still inside the McDonald's when the boy approached me, and I had to ...

Back in late 2009 my editors at Paris Magazine contacted me about writing an article on the Paris nightlife scene. My assignment? To write a sort of rebuttal to the flurry of articles that had recently appeared in the French and American press declaring that Paris was dead after dark. ...

Girl groups from the swinging 60's were a dime a dozen. Record labels paired songwriters with producers, handpicked the voices, and stylists went to work creating a palatable package ready for eager consumers. Parisian starlets The Plastiscines may not have been assembled by executives, but their rise in popularity comes from ...

Although Pink Flamingo Pizza offers many unusual and playful kinds of pizzas, La Ghandi, for example, is topped with sag paneer and baba ganoush, tahini, lemon and garlic, and La Che has marinated Cuban pork and fried plantains – we were more in the mood for a basic pizza, one that ...

Everyone who comes to Paris wants to hit the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, and the Pompidou. After that, there are still lots more choices (150 in all, I'm told) but just what qualifies as numbers 4 through 10 is a pretty subjective business. Still I'm willing to bet that of ...

Today, I was really craving Pinkberry, which, as you can probably guess, doesn’t exist in France. We do, however, have a curious knockoff called Myberry. There’s one not too far from my house, and I was considering trying it out, so in a moment of boredom I logged onto the Myberry ...

Nomiya is a temporary restaurant installation designed by artist Laurent Grasso atop the Palais de Tokyo, only open till July 2010. It's set in a glass box with sweeping views of the city and the food concept is almost like a private dinner party, except you share a communal table ...

As one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Paris takes design very seriously. This attitude manifests itself in the boldness of its many architectural landmarks, as well as day-to-day things, such as the Métro or the ubiquitous newstands on the sidewalk. It’s easy to take for granted that ...

So this is it... Today is the 5th anniversary of ParisDailyPhoto! I've posted 1834 photos since March 11 2005, every single day, without missing one. How's that for a commitment?! LOL. I've also met - or got to know online - an incredible amount of nice people from all over the world, and that is priceless. After 5 years I also thought it was time for a little "bloglift"... I wanted to wait a little more (I'm the perfectionist type!), but I decided to launch it today even though it's not exactly like I want this new layout to be ;-) As you will notice there are more opportunities to view the photos; you can browse by label, by category (Museum, Must see, Exhibition...), you can also click on one of the links suggested by LinkWithin under each post (it's not fully working yet as the service has to crawl all my photos...). There will also be other features in the weeks to come. I hope you'll like this new layout (even though I know that people generally don't like too much change!) and I welcome any comment you may have. Thank you very much to all of you, I enjoy your support, your nice words and your loyalty. BTW, I took this photo 2 days ago outside La Géode at the La Vilette park. If you look closely, you can see me in the reflection ;-)

They should start serving CC stamped peanuts at the Chanel shows.  What hoopla!  The invite had a sketch by Karl of a polar bear, and then the set included a couple of whopping icebergs (imported from Sweden).  Karl’s Dr. Zhivago princesses walked on the sop of the iceberg’s melt, trailing long coats and making a wake with their fur boots.  While the icebergs were real, the fur apparently was fake.  At the end Karl minced around to “Say Captain, Say Wot”!   I thought that was a riot. (I suppose I should say: wot a riot.)

Afterwards, I headed up to Paris 8 at Saint Denis for a littérature comparée class.  I haven’t mentioned this previously on the blog, but I’m working on a master’s degree in literature.  We were studying travel diaries (récits de voyages) and Levi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques.  How did Tristes Tropiques change the field of the travel diary in 1955?  By postulating the death of exoticism, the end of travel, and the deconstruction of otherness – all this without abolishing the possibility of the travel diary.  The first line is “Je hais les voyages et les explorateurs.”  I came home from class to read Cathy Horyn’s review of the Chanel show:

“The Ice Hotel in Sweden provided inspiration. When asked backstage if he had ever visited the hotel, Mr. Lagerfeld, dressed in a Dior peacoat and bleached jeans with a vintage Cartier stickpin in his black tie, shivered and said no.”

Chanel F10 Finale from coquette on Vimeo.

Here are some random photos of architectural details inside and outside the museum. Renaud Bardon, Pierre Colboc and Jean-Paul Philippon were the designers of the museum and Italian architect Gae Aulenti oversaw the design of the conversion from 1980 to... richard nahem