Parisien Sites

A Hospital Vineyard and Other Delights

You gotta love the French when it comes to pleasures of all kind, be it wine, art, food and love!    Not your everyday experience to find a working vineyard in a Parisian hospital, but Paris is known for her little surprising secrets! Hopital Bretonneau, up in Montmartre, has been growing grapes since 2001, with …

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Parisians Life on Exhibit

There has been a street expo electronically plastered throughout Paris , extended to September the 3rd, offering images capturing the everyday lives of those living in Paris.  All were  exquisitely illustrated by the very gifted Japanese artist Kanako Kuno, who came here in 2005, became love struck like me, and started sketching Parisians for  My …

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Paris Plage; Sand In The City

Paris Plage is the largest sand box in the center of Paris, that just happens to have the choicest site of all, running along of the Seine from the quai du Louvre to past Pont Marie overlooking Ile de La Cité and Ile Saint Louis.   For the last 12 years, it has been a …

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Hôtel Dieu ; Oldest Hospital in Paris Threatened With Scandalous Changes

Hôtel Dieu has been in existence since 651, making it the oldest hospital in the city and one of the oldest in Europe. Recently there has been threats to close down the emergency room and hospital wards and turn it into a day surgical center, which has provoked a tremendous opposition from the medical community …

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Bird and Flower Market on a Parisian Sunday

Every once in a while I head out on a Sunday to one of the oldest markets in Paris,  Le Marché aux Oiseaux, that come rain or shine, takes place on Sundays on Ile de La Cité, next to the oldest hospital of Paris called Hopital Dieu, which by the way is a monumental historical building …

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Best Baguette in Paris Contest

I have written before about the seriousness Parisians maintain about their beloved baguette.  The city of Paris puts on a contest each year to find the best baguette each year. Contests such as these may uncover some of the city’s talented bakers, who in the past were not known. It can not be described as …

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Muguet Flowers for May Day

Even if you have totally forgotten what day it is, you are quickly reminded by pretty little bouquets of lily of the valley flowers.  They are for sale on every corner and every few feet all over Paris.  It is the first of May! Tradition has it that King Charles IX in 1561 initiated the …

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Spring Fever

This Louisiana girl has never lived in any other large city, except Paris, so perhaps this phenomena is universal.  We have had a delayed spring, with many cool gray days, and mostly rainy, except a few days last week. All it takes is one warm day, and the population of Paris seems to literally explode …

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Soaking Up Beauty

Last Sunday was free museum day and as usual I head to whatever enclave of beauty and art that calls to me.     Most often like a homing pigeon, I find myself back at the Louvre, because the whole place is so immensely complex and full of nooks and crannies, that you can go …

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My Weekend With Piglets, Cows, Nudes and my Luscious Walnut Tart

Some weekends in Paris, there is just too much to see and do!  The Salon d’Agriculture is definitely one of my favorites salons and then this Sunday was free museum day.  I look forward to this huge and most popular salon every year, where the country comes to Paris.! There you will find the most …

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Zany Chefs, Cookbooks and Foie Gras

What a wonderful weekend in cold snowy Paris!   I don’t think I have ever had so many variations of foie gras and fun as I did this past Saturday and Sunday.   I was lucky to receive an invitation from Gault Millau, the other and better French restaurant guide to The International Cookbook Fair, that …

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Firecrackers and Dancing Dragons Bring in the Year of the Snake

Paris is such a multicultural city, that in some parts, you can almost think you are no longer even in France.  Such was the case last sunday when I attended the parade celebrating the Chinese New Year. Paris’s largest and most famous Chinatown is in the 13 th arrondissement.  Mandarin scroll adorns every storefront, with …

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