The French Journal

Lonely Planet tours Paris

The travel guide Lonely Planet has a video page, and while it's not rich with items yet, there is the one that heads this post for a three minute swing around the city.

Four newish Parisian architectural gems

As an article in The Guardian (U.K.) notes, the beauty of Paris is due at least in part to rigid guidelines about the kinds of construction that can take place in the heart of the city. This is not a town where skyscrapers dominate the view; when they do, like the Tour Montparnasse, they are often reviled.

But in the outer arrondissements there is more freedom to experiment, so The Guardian offers four examples of modern building that give some "edginess" to the city's landscape. Most of them are in the Bercy area. They are:

• The Headquarters of le Parti Communist Français, designed by Oscar Niemeyer, the prime architect of Brasilia.

• Cinémathèque Francaise, by Frank Gehry, who is also responsible for the Guggenheim in Bilboa and the Disney Concert Hall in LA.

• The Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir, a pedestrian bridge opened in 2006.

• Bibliothèque Nationale de France, one of François Mitterand's "grands projets." The four buildings, used mostly for storage, look like open books. Beautiful at night, they are sometimes criticized for their inhospitality (all of the reading rooms are underground). The official BNF site has a video tour.

Spending a day in Paris #3: A guide to the tops (by The Telegraph)

For our last taste of Paris, I'm sending you to The Telegraph (U.K.) for a recent update to its guide to the city. There are lists on the best hotels, restaurants, sites, nightspots, and shopping venues. It's not necessarily the place I'd recommend if you were planning a trip; in its brevity, one almost feels it was written from a desk somewhere in London. For example, the Musée du quai Branly is one of the "top five sites," but Notre Dame and Montmartre are not to be found. We'll forgive the idiocyncracies, however; when faced with the richness of Paris, choosing a few glories is an impossible task. And there's enough there to generate some longing.

Spending the day in Paris #2: Cinematic Paris

Over at the LA Times, Susan Spano offers us a list of the "Ten Best Films to See Paris on the Silver Screen."  Last I'd heard, Spano had relocated to China; she may have left the Paris beat, but the LAT is still squeezing these articles out of her. In any case, there's a lot on her list to quibble with, like her number one: Ratatouille? A good movie, but it's perverse to select computer-generated Paris as your best way to experience the city on fillm. And I like An American in Paris, but most of it was shot in the studio. And then you get to Is Paris Burning?, which may have the scenery, but it's hell to sit through. The others on Spano's list are Love in the Afternoon, Le Divorce, Funny Face, Gigi, Breathless, Day of the Jackal, and Amélie. What? No Paris, Je T'aime?

The opening credits for Love in the Afternoon, with some good Paris scenes, heads this post. I haven't seen the movie for a long time.

Spending the day in Paris #1: Through an artist's eyes

Photograph by Ian Gittler for Budget Travel

April in Paris. Which is where I am not. Nonetheless, I found a good batch of Paris articles to share with you today, so those of us who are far away can spend some time there before this celebrated period ends.

First, through the auspices of Budget Travel, we see the city "through an artist's eyes," the artist being photographer Ian Gittler. There are many evocative delights in this series of 20 shots, including night time at Pigalle, Parisian rooftops, and a sequence on the Palais Royale. Gittler speaks for just about every tourist when he says "...I was as curious and enthusiastic about being here as anyone...I was free to wander and snap pictures of random or even insignificant details simply because I thought they might inspire a sweet memory at some point down the line."

There's even more on Gittler's web site; click on "Paris Journal" on the home page for a diorama, and be sure to look for Charlotte Gainsbourg as you circle around.

NYT Day #2: Bordeaux eats, Paris after midnight, lots of opera, Marie-Thérèse

Other items from the NYT:

• For the two people who read this blog and who have unlimited budgets and who will be spending time in Bordeaux in the near future, be sure to read Christine Muhlke's recap of high-end dining in the city. The rest of us without expense accounts may not find the article edifying. Featured are Restaurant Jean-Maire Amat, La Cape, La Grand'Vigne, Cordeillan-Bages, and Hostellerie de Plaisance. (Got to get myself one of these gigs.)
• If I'm reading Elaine Sciolino's article about Paris by Night correctly, after 1:00 AM your best options in the city are some elaborate noshing and a game of pool.
• A more-or-less forgotten survivor of the French Revolution is the subject of Susan Nagel's Marie-Thérèse, Child of Terror, subtitled "The Fate of Marie Antoinette's Daughter." (Apparently, Louis XVI is less of a draw and doesn't merit any up-front mention. Ah, the indignities continue!) The NYT review says that "while a biographer's impulse to empathize with her subject is commendable, Nagel's desire to humanize Marie-Thérèse leads her to make some unconvincing assumptions."
• To scope out the future of New York City Opera, music critic Anthony Tommasini has hied himself to Paree to check out productions overseen by Gerald Mortier, who will take over the NYCO next year. Reading between the lines, New Yorkers and opera aficionados should prepare themselves for non-traditional experiences after Mortier hits the town.

A virtual tour of Paris, Mai 1968

A pivotal event of recent French history was the riots of 1968, when an act of disciplining students turned into weeks of upheaval that gradually involved all levels of French society. An excellent virtual tour, almost an online documentary of the era, has been created by Agnès Poirier for The Guardian. As you click on the numbers of a map, Poirier and two commentators tell how the events unfolded, illustrated by a slide show of modern day Paris. It's a formula which both teaches and gives joy those who simply in the mood to revisit the city. And sure enough, for an ironic note about the immutability of some aspects of the French character, while the narrators walk around the sites, they come across a present day demonstration.

Cool and new Paris

What's cool in the City of Light? According to an article in The Times (London), the line up is something like this: a bistro in the 13th called L’Avant Goût for pot au feu for lunch; the Ritz's Bar Hemingway; Muriel Grateau, a boutique for linens, porcelins, and jewelry; the Musée Nissim de Camondo, a preserved family home redolent with art and antiques; and 3 Rooms, a place to stay, where there are three designer apartments awaiting your arrival.

Should you desire "new," instead of cool, Town and Country suggests that you try out Alain Ducasse's Le Jules Verne, now at the Eiffel Tower; the redesigned exhibits at the Arc de Triomphe; the new showroom of Hermès, complete with glass staircase; ditto, Chanel's new store; and Gordon Ramsay au Trianon, at Versailles, where the superstar British chef will swear at you.

Rescuing Deyrolle

A morning quickie. As my dear fellow blogger Polly wrote in February, Deyrolle, a taxidermy shop and Parisian landmark, suffered a devastating fire. Last week, the International Herald Tribune had an update on the efforts to rebuild Deyrolle. While some may initially think that taxidermy is ghoulish, for Deyrolle it is an effort at conservation and education. The fire generated outpourings of first, sorrow, and then, support. The current owner, Prince Louis-Albert de Broglie, has hopes of re-opening a couple of rooms at the store soon; he is committed to rebuilding, and making the shop even better than before.

Parisians, under the Occupation, in color

A new, sometimes controversial, exhibit featuring rare color photographs of Paris during the Occupation has opened at the La Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris. The photographer André Zucca took the shots during the period while on-staff for a magazine, Signal, which was largely an outlet for Nazi propaganda.The Paris portrayed here might almost seem insouciant; the epidemic of queues of people waiting for food rations is not in evidence. If one looks closely, however, at some of the bucolic shots, the color reveals yellow Stars of David in shop windows.

The controversy surrounds Zucca. He was well-paid for his assignments, and he obviously had access to resources such as color stock when it was not ordinarily available. In reviewing the exhibition and an accompanying book on his blog for Le Monde, prominent intellectual Pierre Assouline notes that there is -- at best -- ambiguity about whether Zucca could be considered a collaborator. In response to a line in a preface that "(Zucca) worked for and against the Occupation," Assouline writes, "'For,' one sees well, but 'against,' one still searches for."