Mois: août 2021

Oberkampf. You know the metro station, which was named for the street. The street was named for Christopher-Philip Oberkampf in 1864. But do you know who Oberkampf was and why there is a street named after him?

Christopher was a German Protestant immigrant to France in the 1700s under the Ancien Regime. He was a man who climbed the social and financial ladder by his own grit. He came from Germany and spoke only German when he arrived in Paris as a trained, but young, textile printer and dyer. He died a millionaire, head of an empire of 1300 workers and fashion trend-setter. The odds were against him, but his tenacity, creativity, technique, innovation, intuition and thick skin makes him one of the best immigration success stories in history. And that's why Paris has a street, metro and neighborhood named after him. But in fact though he did not live and work in Paris but in the nearby (now) suburb of Jouy-en-Josas. You probably know this town as the location …

Bike or run the Parc de Saint Cloud and Bois de Boulogne Sometimes getting out of town means just going to the end of the metro line. There are really nice places to explore just beyond the edge of Paris in the banlieue*. Here's a super bike ride or run of about 10km that takes you through the Bois de Boulogne, across the Seine on the Aqueduct de l'Avre footbridge,  through the Parc de Saint Cloud, past the Cité de la Céramique to end at the Pont de Sèvres metro station in Boulogne. Starting from the Fondation Louis Vuitton in the Bois, head down avenue Mahatma Gandi then turn left on the bike path heading south. This bike path starts on the right side of Allée de la Reine Marguerite. Continue on the bike path past the Rose Gardens of Bagatelle, follow the bike path and it's wiggles through the intersection of la Grande Cascade and continue towards the Longchamp hippodrome. Circle around to the right the south end of Longchamp on Route de la Seine À la Butte Mortemart. Pa…

Bordeaux. Nice. City. It took us way too long to get there for a visit. We had a lovely time there over 5 nights. There's a lot to see and it seems like a very liveable place. I would seriously consider it if I were planning to move. Great bikes paths which will be even better once some of the many construction sites are done, lots to do, lots of culture, a great river front walk and a really nice mixture of old/historic and new.

One of the new masterpieces is the Cité du Vin leading the gentrification of the area called “Le Quartier des bassins à flots” or wet docks.

The ceiling of the Cité du Vin's panoramic view tasting bar

The Cite du Vin is a new generation cultural center, unique in the world they say, and, obviously, focused on all aspects of wine. Wine is presented in its cultural framework, its relationship to civilization, scientifically and agriculturally, its heritage and history and the future. The Cité is a cultu…

A specific word in French indicates rivers that end in oceans : fleuve. Getting my hair cut the other day in Boulogne Billancourt not far from the Seine I asked my coiffeuse, an immigrant like myself, if she knew anything about the Seine. « I know it’s a floose » she replied. Everyone in the salon erupted in laughter. This fleuve is no floose. Traversing Paris under 37 bridges on it’s 776 kilometer run from a plateau north of Dijon to the English Channel at Le Havre, the Seine, steeped in history with a capital H, is one of five principal ocean-flowing rivers in France. The Loire is the longest at 1010 kilometers. La Garonne, Le Rhône and Le Rhin are the others. Until joined by the tributary Aube, the river carries the first of its noms-de-fleuve, the Petite-Seine. Farther on, augmented again by the Yonne at Montereau, it is the Haute-Seine until Paris. Then it is the Basse-Seine to Rouen and, finally, the Seine-Maritime to the sweep of the sea. The Seine everybody sees is in …