25 Things I Love About Paris: #5

5. Le pain

Yet another Parisian stereotype but for good reason. Bread is serious business here and it's seriously good. We've not quite gotten down the routine of picking up bread every single day but we're getting close. The bakery on our corner serves it up fresh and hot; it can be hard to get home without breaking off the top (quignon) for a little snack. After months of buying the plain old "baguette", I've since decided that "le tradition" is the best -- a bit crunchier on the outside and chewier on the inside. Toasted with salted butter and fig jam in the morning, it's hard to beat.

25 Things I Love About Paris: #4

4. Le Métro

What's not to love? Okay, it isn't very pretty and it can be stifling and stinky in the summer but it always gets me where I need to go, often faster than if I went by taxi. I never have to worry about parking, car insurance, or the price of gas, and with my Navigo pass, I can hop on and off with impunity.

25 Things I Love About Paris: #3

3. Le plat du jour.

There's no getting around it. Eating out in Paris is expensive. The hole in the wall joint around the corner from my apartment stuffed all the mailboxes with a flyer for their special -- hamburger, soft drink, and coffee -- all for 16 euros. Even with the improved value lately of the dollar against the euro, that still ain't cheap.

So skip the burger and you'll never go wrong ordering the plat du jour off the blackboard. It's what's fresh and good plus it's usually a relative bargain. What's more, you might even end up learning that you like something that you would have otherwise never ordered.

25 Things I Love About Paris: #2

2. Street art that's more than grafitti.

This wall is on rue Mouffetard near the Pantheon. The painting is by Pierre Alechinsky, the poem is by Yves Bonnefoy. I've looked around for a translation but finding none, I'm not going to even try. Suffice it to say, that it's about a tree and how it affects people.

Lots more great wall art can be found in Belleville and the Buttes aux Cailles neighborhoods, among others.

25 Things I Love About Paris: #1

Laurie, who takes care of business over at The Paris Blog, recently posted a photo album of the things she loves about Paris and challenged others to do the same. I accept!

So here goes...the first in a series of posts.


1. Tour Eiffel. It's corny yes but iconic all the same. It's the essence of Paris. I caught this shot while the stars of the European Union were still up. Now that Sarkozy's term as EU President is over, it's back to its original unadorned state.

The Great American Novel

Calling all readers! I've been given the assignment for my French class to make a short presentation about an American novel. Although I'm a big reader, I figured I could use some input. Plus I'd like to pick something a little less obvious than, say, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or The Red Badge of Courage. Ideally, it should be a real slice of Americana but simple in its language (for those who are not English speakers who would like to read it in the original version) and perhaps translated broadly (for those who are not English speakers). For the record, my classmates are from Brazil, Chile, Nigeria, Russia, Turkey, and Zimbabwe. The two teachers are naturally French. Your suggestions, please.

Bonaparte in Egypt

There's an exhibit at the Institute du Monde Arabe about Napoleon's campaign in Egypt and its aftermath and I went over the weekend for the second time. Since my first visit was an hour and a half guided tour in French, I focused my full powers of concentration on what the guide was saying and as a result, I felt like I hadn't spent nearly enough time looking at the exhibited objects. As luck would have it, I'd bought my husband a copy of British author Paul Strathern's readable Napoleon and Egypt for his birthday and was able to snag it off his nightstand while he was busy reading about the history of money. Two weeks and several hundred pages later, I was better equipped to enjoy it and to act as interpreter for my nine year old who's been studying ancient Egypt in school.

Napoleon's sojourn in Egypt was pretty much a debacle -- his entire fleet was sunk in Aboukir Bay by the British, both cutting off his supply lines and stranding him in the Middle East; he lost soldiers by the thousands to massacres, the plague, and other privations; and he was unable to hold onto any of the military victories he had there. He even lost the Rosetta Stone, deciphered by a Frenchman, to the British Museum. But the man was a genius when it came to public relations. He came back to a France hungry for a military hero and its people, worn out by revolution, corruption, and war, pretty much ended up handing him the empire. His adventures there became legend and the fascination with all things "oriental" defined styles in furniture and fashion. And his decision to bring along a team of savants, experts in science, mathematics, and the arts, meant that there was a lasting legacy of new knowledge about a world long mysterious to Europeans. The exhibit closes at the end of March.