I Prefer Paris

Cannes Film Festival 08

The Cannes film Festival 08 started this week and I thought the poster was great this year. For the latest, up to the minute dish on the films, fashion, and parties, go to www.indiewire.com

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

My Secret Garden

There’s a hidden rose garden in the Marais that I keep a secret and only show on my tours. I frequently visit and in the spring it changes weekly, sometimes daily. The weather has been glorious for the last week: sunny, warm with a cool, pleasant breeze, and not a cloud in the sky. I hadn’t been in a about a week and on Sunday, when I was showing it to my clients, I gasped. Suddenly, all the closed buds that had stubbornly held out for sunshine, had burst wide open. In all the times I’d had been here, I had never seen so many in bloom at the same time. The wild vines were overflowing with outrageous roses in the most stunning colors that nature could only make, almost looking fake in their perfection. Of course the smell was deliriously intoxicating. Here are some photos and even though I think they look great, it pales by comparison to experiencing them live. So now you have to take one of my tours if you want to see my secret garden.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Sophie Calle Prenez soin de vous

If you received an unexpected, devastating email (not even a letter, mind you) from your lover breaking up with you, what would you do? Probably cry, be by yourself for days and not want to talk to anyone. Not artist Sophie Calle. At a loss in not knowing how to answer the email, she decided to share it with 107 women of different professions and see what their interpretation was. The result is a fascinating, brilliant show of videos letters, texts, photos, and drawings all analyzing and advising Calle what to do. Part of the brilliance of the exhibit is having it the magnificent, stately Labrouste reading room of the Bibliotheque Nationale giving it an added literary dimension. Videos with legendary Jeanne Moreau, aging bimbo Ariel Dombassy, quirky Laurie Anderson, and Spanish siren Victoria Abril among others are insightful, humorous, and sometimes moving. One with a woman dragging out blow up sex dolls and doing demonstrations with dildos is a hoot. On a more serious note, a lawyer advises Calle in a point-by-point analysis on how she may be able to sue him for financial damages based on certain statutes. What makes it so rich is the variety of professions the women she asked to participate: lawyer, actress, clown, opera singer, songwriter, painter, stand up comedian, police commissioner, performance artist and others.

Read the full letter in English so you make your own interpretation and then post it in the comments section.

Put this and the Richard Serra exhibit at the top of your Paris must do list.

Take care.

Prenez soin de vous till June 15
Bibliotheque Nationale Richelieu
81 rue Richelieu, 2nd arr.
Metro: Bourse, Palais Royal, or Pyramides
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday 10AM- 8PM,Thursday10AM-10PM
Sunday 12PM- 8PM

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Door of the Month:Goddesses & Mermaids on Cité Malesherbes

It’s a doubleheader this month. I found these door goddesses and mermaids on my wonderful adventure with my clients last month on the Cité Malesherbes near Pigalle. I especially love the exquisite detailing on the mermaid and on the shell above her.

Cité Malesherbes- off rue de Matyrs, 9th arr.
Metro: Pigalle or Notre Dame de Lorette

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Richard Serra’s Promenade for Monumenta 2008 at the Grand Palais

Spellbinding.

That’s the best word I can use to describe the Mounmenta 2008 Richard Serra Promenade exhibit at the Grand Palais.

Monumenta is a three-year series of art exhibitions where the Grand Palais invites a major international artist to display his work. The organizers promote it as a challenge, since the artist has to fill the largest existing ironwork and glass structure in the world, a Belle Epoque style palace built in 1900, measuring a whopping 162,000 square feet. Last year it was the incredible Anselm Kiefer Falling Stars and in 20010 it will be Christian Boltanski.

My friend Diane Pernet went to the opening on Monday, where Richard Serra spoke about the installation. He said his favorite time to see it was at night, as it takes on a much different feel to it then the daytime.

I went last Friday night at about 10PM with Diane and some friends. It was a beautiful clear, balmy spring night. Once I walked into the exhibit, I was awestruck. It was almost devoid of people and the silence of the vast space struck me. Five tall metal, slightly curved, walls towered over me and I was filled with peace and solitude, much like the experience of being in a sacred religious temple. I walked around for about an hour, viewing from it from every angle I could, and each place I stood was a unique opportunity to marvel this masterpiece.


Looking above at the complex, spiraling skylight, outside the French flag was waving. It took my breath away. It reminded me again how lucky I am to be living in this amazing city, a place that symbolizes art and beauty more then any other place I’ve ever been.

There’s not much else to say than this is a must if you are in Paris in the next month.

Monumenta 2008:Richard Serra Promenade
May 7 till June 15
Grand Palais
Ave Winston Churchill, 8th arr.
Metro: Champs-Elysees-Clemenceau
Monday & Wednesday 10AM-7PM
Thursday to Sunday 10AM-11PM
Tickets http://www.fnacspectacles.com/recherche/rechercheRapide.do?search=monumentaa>

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Courtyard Delight

I went to my dentist yesterday for a painful experience, cleaning my teeth, and left with a pleasant one, finding a lovely new courtyard in his building. The dentist’s office is in a residential 18th century building next to the Etienne Marcel metro station, bordering the commercial Les Halles area. The building is pretty non-descript from the outside but once inside there is the quaintest courtyard with a country setting. A private terrase is surrounded by bottle green iron fence festooned with the lushest ivy. Around the rest of the courtyard were window boxes in bloom and flowering potted plants. A young woman was feverishly planting away and I can see the plants and flowers were her pride and joy. I love discovering new finds like this and I always tell my tour clients some of the most beautiful Paris sites are the ones hidden behind the big doors in these courtyards.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Eye Prefer Paris Tour Photos: Kari Raaen and Jodi & Chelsea

Kari Raaen is a professional photographer specializing in child and family portraits. She was referred to me by a good friend in New York who told me Kari was one of her best friends and was coming to Paris.Kari specifically wanted a tour with good photo ops and I promised her my tours were full of them. Along the way, Kari fell in love much like I did with all the beautiful doors we passed. She started to shoot them and inadvertently choose mostly blue ones. I told her it would be great to do a blue door series for my blog. Most of the doors are located in the Marais and Ile St. Louis. Take a look at Kari’s wonderful portraits on her site.
www.kariodellphotography.com

I had a fun afternoon with former New Yorker Jodi and her daughter Chelsea, on spring break from college, who now live in Boca Raton, Florida. It was one of those typical schizophrenic weather days in Paris where the sun was shining one minute and the next it was pouring rain. So in between the cloudbursts we ducked into the Marais’s high fashion shops and Jodi and Chelsea did some major damage. One of the stops was Lobato, the top shoe boutique in the Marais with labels Pierre Hardy, Marc Jacobs, Lanvin, and Martin Margiela among others. Jodi tried on a stunning pair of Easter egg blue and dark brown shoes with a large gold buckle. Being the classic shopping enabler, I told her that there was no question about it: she must buy them. Here’s a photo. Wear them well Jodi.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

May 3, 1968

Last Saturday, May 3, commemorated the 40th anniversary of the historic student riots in Nanterre and Paris in 1968.

I was recently contacted by a woman named Helene Sotsky from Massachusetts from a mailing I did through a travel organization called WITIA. Helen was kind enough to share with me her vivid story about how she spent her junior year in Paris during the 1968 riots. I thought it would be interesting to read a first hand account of the historical events that changed France. Enjoy! Thanks Helene.

I have such vivid recollections of my time as a student in Paris--my daughters tell me that I still speak of that time as if it were yesterday--not just les événements--but the whole year. I remember the day it really started in Paris (no one paid much attention to Nanterre)--there were about 5 students protesting--we didn't know about what yet at the time--then 10 police came. Then 20 students came. Then 50 police came...and so on. The mother of the family I was living with in the 16e was of Russian origin, but had come to France as an infant and was very,very French. But still, she remembered all she had heard of the Russian Revolution. She actually went to the Théàtre de l’Odéon and gave a speech, telling the students that they didn't know what they were doing by fomenting rebellion (of course, she and her family always spoke about the good ol' days under the Czar) and disorder. She had courage, I'll say that for her. I think it's hilarious that Dany le rouge is now known as Dany le vert because he espouses ecological causes!

One of the most ridiculous memories I have is of the first day that the students began occupying the Sorbonne. Several people in my program were in a class at the IPFE (Institut des Professeurs de Français à Étranger) waiting for the teacher to arrive. The representative of the French students came in to advise us to leave since they were planning to occupy the building and it might turn violent. Sounded logical to us...we all got up to leave when the director of our program came running in, telling us that we shouldn't leave because the teacher was a full professor and we were required to wait 15 minutes for her to show up! We all left anyway. Ours was the only junior year program to remain in Paris. All the others brought in buses from Belgium to get their students out. Our program paid the various professors to come to Reid Hall and give us our final exams so that we could get full credit for the year. I walked from the 16e to Reid Hall and back every day, through tear gas, barricades, --all that les événements brought to Paris. It was a frightening time because no one knew if the government would fall. There were soldiers with machine guns all over and the city was surrounded by tanks. But we were young and believed we were invincible. When we finally left in the beginning of June, the ship was still flying a red flag when we arrived in the port--but we finally made it. I always loved the French flair for understatement and discretion--everything that was closed and boarded up, had a sign apologizing that they were closed 'en raison des circonstances'--

Each time I returned to Paris, I went to visit my French family--first with my husband, then with my daughters. Then one of my daughters visited the mother of our family when she went with a friend to Paris. We stayed in touch until they died. I still sometimes go back to the same street just to see what it looks like.

Photos courtesy of www.pollyvousfrancais.blogspot.com

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

May Eye Need to Do’s:Richard Serra at Monumenta 2008, Vincent Gagliostro’s St. Gael, and French Open 2008

Monumenta 2008 at the Grand Palais: Richard Serra’s Promenade
Richard Serra’s Promenade is the chosen show for Monumenta this year at the Grand Palais. Monumenta, the three-year art project now it its second year, invites a major world artist to install works with the challenge of filling the colossal space. Serra’s monuments of steel will surely fill the space magnificently.

Monumenta 2008:Richard Serra
May 7 till June 15
Grand Palais
Ave Winston Churchill, 8th arr.
Metro: Champs-Elysees-Clemenceau
Monday & Wednesday 10AM-7PM
Thursday to Sunday 10AM-11PM
Tickets

St.Gael
In one predatory glance, ripping his image form the magazine, (thought) the most beautiful mouth I had ever seen. That’s the startling statement from artist Vincent Gagliostro’s new show about his obsession with Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal (Y tu Mama Tambien, Babel, Motorcycle Diaries). Gagliostro reveals his predatory nature as an artist (his contention, that all artists are somewhat predatory) exploiting this particular subject through his particular brand of gay politics and activism. Artist Susan Shup (April’s Parisian of the Month) curates this highly charged installation of videos, paintings, and photomontage.

Saint Gael
Miss China Beauty
May 15 to June 9
3 rue Francaise, near Etienne Marcel, 1er
Open Tuesday to Saturday, 1:30PM –6:30PM
01.42.46.28.22
Metro: Etienne Marcel
www.gagliostro.com

Jazz Festival at St. Germain de Pres
The left bank’s renowned café and cabaret area celebrates with its annual jazz festival. A latino style Swing Ball, the London Community Gospel Choir, Jacky Terrasson, and a tribute to the Beatles by pianist Bojan Z and Italian singer Petra Magoni are some of the exciting acts on the bill.

Jazz Festival at St. Germain de Pres
May 6 till May 23
http://www.festivaljazzsaintgermainparis.com/

2008 French Open at Roland Garros
See the top players duke it out for two weeks at the red clay courts at Roland Garros. Will Federer finally beat Nadal to win his first French Open? Tune in and see.

2008 French Open at Roland Garros
May 25 to June 8
http://www.rolandgarros.com/en_FR/index.html

Poet in New York: Bianca Li
Bianca Li’s latest dance piece inspired by Federico Garcia Lorca’s visit to New York in 1929. Opening to rave reviews last year in Granada, the eclectic mix of flamenco, jazz and modern groove features 21 dancers and 10 musicians.

Poeta en Nueva York
May 7th – May 17th
Théâtre National de Chaillot,
1 place du Trocadéro,16th arr.
Metro: Trocadero
http://www.theatre-chaillot.fr/

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Le Premier Mai

Today is May day/le premier Mai, one of the most important holidays on the French calendar. It’s their version of Labor Day in the U. S., a workman’s holiday. All of Paris is closed including museums, shops and even my Club Med Gym (can’t work off those calories from my big dinner last night). One of the traditions of this holiday is to give friends and family a Lily of the Valley plant or stem. The tradition started on May 1 1562, when King Charles IX received one as a lucky charm and each year after that he offered them to the ladies of the court.

Hundreds of stands are set up all over the city selling the white, fragrant lovelies and many organizations raise money by selling them because they are exempt from paying tax on them.

I bought mine from a cute young girl sporting a stylish silver studded black cap in front of the St. Paul church (pictured above).

A Version in Chocolate

In My Apartment

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com