by Margot Nightingale | Oct 22, 2014 | Paris |
It’s late October and la grisaille de Paris has announced itself. The gun metal grey atmosphere of the season has settled in in all its mind-numbing glory. Time to start popping the Vitamin D. Time to stock up on extra wine in the cupboard. Buckle up, Jacques, the ride’s going to get bumpy… winter’s coming. Thankfully, there’s a little gift the blessed French have given us gratis… a little Christmas in October. It’s called Toussaint and it’s a two-week vacation… pause… for school children. Growing up in the States, the only “vacation” we had before Christmas was Columbus Day, now basically obliterated due to retroactive disowning of Christopher Columbus’s hero-status, and the obligatory day and a half off at Thanksgiving, creating the long weekend that truthfully felt like heaven on earth. (I can smell the turkey cooking in the oven now.) So today, here in Paris, you’d think I never lived a day in my life without the generous two-week October break. How, I ask myself, did I survive the puny days-off given in the United States? Now, under the grey skies of Paris – oops, now it’s raining, everyone in the house suddenly gets agita around the middle of the month of Toussaint break, and we each act like a horse in full gallop back to the coral as the holiday approaches. Hey, can you go any faster buddy? Out of my way! I need les vacances now or I’m going to drop dead right here! I can’t open another page of my French grammar book! No more maths problems! Can’t take one more walk to school in the...
by Rebecca Earley | Oct 15, 2014 | Paris, Paris tips |
Itʼs the the start of fall. The air is just starting to turn crisp, there seems to be a little more color around, and you feel a fresh wave of “new” in the breeze. Somehow even though we are approaching the end of the year, it feels like a fresh start. Maybe itʼs because fall typically marks the beginning of a new school year, “la rentrée,” for the French. Or maybe because itʼs the beginning of months of celebration with family and friends. Either way, something about the start of fall feels new. Last weekend was the first weekend of fall in Paris. Even though it did not quite feel like fall yet, my friends and I managed to have, accidentally, the perfect first autumn weekend. So, in the spirit of starting the season of sharing, I would like to share my perfect autumn weekend in Paris with you. Friday night: Itʼs the end of the work week, and Iʼm actually able to leave at a normal hour. I catch the metro on the Champs Elysées to meet my good friend in Montparnasse for crêpes. We meet in front of Crêperie Josselin, the most famous crêperie in Paris, where the mounds of butter are bigger than your head. We stuff ourselves with our usual orders, the Maraîchère, a spinach, crème fraîche, filled crêpe, topped with a fried egg and 3 enormous slabs of bacon, followed by the Caramel au Beurre Salé crêpe, covered in the restaurantʼs homemade salted butter caramel sauce. After finishing our cider and wheel-barreling ourselves out the door, we part ways until our next gluttonous feast....
