14 Monday May 2018
Posted in Travel
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Let’s get one thing straight: a “league” is a not a measure of depth. A league is equal to three miles. As Jules Verne would have it, twenty thousand leagues was a measure of horizontal distance under the sea, a journey that would’ve gone on longer had Kirk Douglas not interfered.
05 Thursday May 2016
Posted in Travel
8:00 AM → 8:00 PM. Twelve hours, right?
Wrong.
It’s actually 21 hours, given the nine-hour time difference between Paris and Portland. Twenty-one hours, and it never got dark.
01 Sunday May 2016
This is our last Sunday in Paris, and it is magnificent. It happens to be May 1st, when people are buying and exchanging little bouquets of muguets des bois (Lilies of the Valley, pictured above), a lovely old tradition. It is also Labor Day here, a celebration of workers with a bit of a socialist tinge, so more people than usual have the day off. On top of all that, it has been sunny all day and the temperature is well into the 60s.
20 Wednesday Apr 2016
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Yesterday was a perfect day … as perfect as a day gets. It helps, of course, to have spent it in Paris.
11 Monday Apr 2016
The last time I saw the Avenue des Champs-Élysées (maybe 30 years ago), it was lined with stores that were terrifying to the average tourist. Designer boutiques, purveyors of Rolexes, Tiffany, and Cartier, all in little polished box stores with no excess of stock visible, attended by lean chic Parisiennes wearing dark suits, dark hose, and needle heels, plus that particular Parisian frown that signals that you’re in the wrong rodeo, cowboy.
04 Monday Apr 2016
Posted in Sidebar
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Louise’s phone photo of Venus de Milo statuettes at the Louvre gift shop
We have been blogging since 2011—five years. During that time I have purchased four cameras for use during our travels, and sold three of them. I may be about the sell the other.
04 Wednesday Feb 2015
Posted in Sentiments
“How IS the country?” asked my friend Patricia after opening the door to her teeny tiny tony Paris flat.
I allowed how it was just fine.
“Je DETESTE la campagne!” she announced firmly, indicating that she was not about to come to Martizay to return my visit anytime soon.
The Expat Almanac 