Posted by admin on May 31, 2007 under One stop travel guide to Paris | 
If Paris has a Buddha Bar, why doesn’t it have an Isis Bar? Especially if the city’s name may even originate from Bar-Isis. Maybe London’s Isis Bar will have to consider jumping across the channel.
After reading the review posted on worldsbestbars.com, I was tempted to hop on the Eurostar and check it out, but I’ll wait until Isis makes her way back to the Seine where she belongs.
How would you describe the ideal bar? My description of the ideal bar would be a place where bartenders made you feel as if you had been coming there for years. Beers would not cost more than 1.50 Euros.
Wine by the glass would be served always at the right temperature.
You’d be sure to have at least one good conversation during the evening. And the music? And there’s the rub. What is the best ambiance music for barflys? Guess it would have to be the blues.
As for World’s Best Bars take on the Paris bar scene, it’s amazing to see how one of Paris’s very chic bars Hotel Costes tallies up to bars like Cabaret. Cabaret definitely appears to be getting higher marks from customers for friendlier staff. Read enough of the comments by recent visitors and you’ll feel like you’ve already seen enough, and heard enough for one night.
The Isis Bar will be different. Everyone will want to come back.
If you are thinking of opening a bar in Paris, this is the key to success: people need to come back. A good bar doesn’t need models and it doesn’t need ‘People’. What does a good bar need? Staff with class and panache.
It’s all about the people behind the bar - not sitting on the barstools. A good bartender is like a conductor.
Posted by admin on under Prague's Travel and Accommodation News |
(or A Journey of with ) is a name of the remarkable historic event for all those who are attracted by knight encounters, historic festivities, ride in a horse-drawn carriage, demonstrations of original crafts or just a walk through a beautiful countryside.
Royal Procession from Prague to Karl¹tejnFriday, and Saturday, in Prague City
Everybody can join from the Friday’s morning at the Prague Castle
This historical Royal Procession follows the story of , Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, who is taking imperial crown jewels, sacred symbols of the Holy Roman Empire, back to Karl¹tejn Castle
read this story here:
www.kralovskypruvod.cz/an.html
Posted by admin on under One stop travel guide to Paris |
Be prepared to be embarrassed, once, twice, a million times, in your efforts to speak - and understand French. Yesterday, I carefully read Aujourd’hui’s announcement that President Sarkozy would be in Havre for a ‘grand reunion public’ - but I didn’t read far enough ‘grand reunion public dans le cadre des legislatives’. i.e. it doesn’t look like this will be what I had translated to mean a ‘meeting open to the grand public’. Sometimes you just have to use common sense.
Given the number of surprise appearances (like Segolene Royal at Clichy-sous-bois), you never know when or where people are going to turn up for a ‘hello’ to the ‘grand public’.
In the meantime, Le Havre is still a nice place to visit, particularly if you’re looking for fresh fish.
Posted by admin on under One stop travel guide to Paris |
Photo by Eric Vandeghen ©2007
Eric took this photo with his cell phone. Not bad! His picture does a much better job of showing the park ambiance and he captures the ‘long ago and far away essence’ of the park.
Thanks, Eric for this photo!
In a previous post, I mentioned Albert Kahn Park as being one of those idyllic parks on the outskirts of Paris (in Boulogne-Billancourt) where you can imagine for a moment that you are walking through a Japanese garden or one of the French provinces.
Although spring is an especially nice time to visit the park, there are revolving exhibits throughout summer. A nice place to cool off on a hot summer’s day if you happen to be in the Boulogne-Billancourt area. Be sure to read Jacqueline McCraths’ excellent article written for the NY Times in 1997, A Philosophy in Bloom.
Posted by admin on under One stop travel guide to Paris |
Yes, it is real. And you may not realize that it’s happening to you. The feeling is something like driving the wrong way on a one-way highway and wondering why all those cars are driving the wrong way. If you’re visiting Paris for a few days, you don’t have to think about this, but for those of you who plan are spending a year here for school, for work, or to write your great novel, when you get that feeling - that everybody else is doing things the wrong way, then you know you’ve got a bad case of culture shock. It sneaks up on your that way.
But the most important thing to remember when all of sudden you’ve got the blues - for no particular reason, or the ‘cafard’ as we say in French, is that, suddenly the clouds will lift again. I’m not a psychologist, but it seems that one of the best remedies for this ‘culture shock’ is not to be too hard on yourself. Okay, so maybe you might not have succeeded in speaking French without a pronounced twang. You miss being able to tell jokes - or sprawling a la couch potato.
Maybe you’ve forced yourself to avoid speaking English to learn a new language, but remember that you can’t turn your back on who you are and your own roots. Sometimes the best remedy for culture shock is to find the nearest thing to ‘home’. Camp out in one Paris’s English, Irish or Australian pubs or an American style restaurants like Thanksgiving, go to the American Library or stop in at WICE and talk.
As Jim Wills, a veteran traveler, once said, he always recognizes who’s been away from home the longest: they’re the ones who order the hamburgers or the spaghetti. (I didn’t get at first - after my first RTW trip).
So, now that you know about Culture Shock, (look for it to happen about six months into your sejour), recognize it, and carry on.
Posted by admin on under One stop travel guide to Paris |
The chances of seeing a Frenchman wearing a beret in Paris - are probably about the same as bumping into Matt Damon or Brad Pitt on their way home from the Cannes film festival. If you do see someone wearing a French beret, it could well be our neighbor who is Scottish. When he’s not wearing his beret, he might even being wearing his kilt.
The reason I bring up the beret is because a conversation came up recently about the waterproof quality of the beret. Peter tells us that the real berets our made with goathair which helps the beret to remain waterproof.
Luckily.
You may recall the video i posted of featuring the French terrier - Lucy. Lucy chases brooms and barks at vacuum cleaners and wheelbarrows. She has also done the unthinkable. During a ride about town, Lucy peed in Peter’s beret which he had left on the backseat of the car.
He has assured us that with a thorough washing, the beret is just as good as ever. There are probably several morals to this story. Make sure if you buy a beret, get an authentic Basque beret (that’s the region in France where men do wear berets).
Posted by admin on under One stop travel guide to Paris |
While new personalities appear on the tennis courts every year to be analyzed and dissected, Yannick Noah, at age 47 is a refreshing sign that yes, there is not only life after tennis, but a totally different kind of life. He’s still a superstar, but on a different playing field - the concert stage.
This June, from June 4th to June 10th, he’ll be performing at the Zenith in Paris. His latest album Charango, released last fall has sold over a half million copies already.
In a sport that seems rife with personal scandal, its share of victims and prima donas, it’s nice to see a success story, not to mention a family success story (Yannick Noah’s son Joakim Noah will be going pro this fall in US basketball). Meanwhile Joakim’s dad, Yannick is rockin’. Consider the fact that Yannick Noah will be performing almost 150 concerts just in France this year. Plans are in the works to cut an album with songs in English. Noah maintains an apartment in New York and spends much of his time living outside of France, dividing his time between New York, Montreux and Geneva.
In a recent interview which appeared in Le Parisien (may 25th) (Propos recueillis by Emmanuel Marolle), Noah responds to some of the questions regarding scandals in the tennis community:
“The top players - we’ve all had problems with our parents. If everything’s going smoothly, you don’t find kids spending four hours-a-day playing tennis.”
Posted by admin on under One stop travel guide to Paris |
Image from
www.pantheon.org
Most guidebooks will tell you that the early settlers along the Seine River were called Parisii. The Paris Blue Guides suggest that the Parisii or Quarisii were part of the Celtic population of the Second Iron Age, coming from Germany.
Today I read another theory: “By certain archeologists, the word Paris is supposed to be a corruption of the word ‘Bar-Isis becoming through Roman pronunciation ‘Parisii’, the name of the tribe that inhabited the site on which Paris now stands. The boat in the coat-of-arms of Paris is supposed to be the bark of the Negro goddess. Isis was the goddess of navigation. According to De Breuil, a statue of Isis existed in the Abbey of St. Germain-des-Pres, Paris as late as 1514, when it was ordered broken by Cardinal Briconnet.”
“The worship of Isis spread through the remainder of Europe and into Asiatic Russia. Ancient statuettes of her have been found in Northern France, in the the Rhineland, and on the Moselle. (Does this mean that a thousand years from now all we tourists who bring home souvenirs if Isis statues and ‘good luck’ charms will be designated as ‘worshippers’ by future generations?) Her temples were in all that region as well as in Britain. She is believed to have a temple in Paris, and another nearby at Melun.”
Here is another quote of interest in the chapter entitled “The Black Madonna” from the book, “Sex and Race” by J.A. Rogers, 1940, 37 Morningside Ave. NYC
“St. Augustine himself says, “What is now called the Christian religion has existed among the ancients and was not absent from the beginning of the human race until Christ came in the flesh from which time the true religion existed already began to be called Christian.”"
In this chapter, “The Black Madonna”, J.A. Rogers discusses the origins of the Black Madonna. If any of you have ever visited pilgrimage sites of Black Madonnas, for example in Montserrat or in Poland, you may have heard the explanation of the ‘blackness’ being caused by hundreds of years of smoke. Rogers offers some other possibilities to consider. He states that “During the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars there was a general destruction of Black Madonnas in Europe, two notable instances being Montserrat and Le Puys in France.”
Rogers goes on to describe two of the oldest Black Madonnas of Europe: the Black Virgin of Nuria, Spain and of Loretto, Italy. That of Loretto was destroyed in fire in 1930, but accorrding to Father Ledit, Pope Pius XI had ordered that the original color of the madonna should be preserved ( today the majority of the Black Madonnas have Caucasian features).
Posted by admin on under One stop travel guide to Paris |
Here’s another worry to add to your list of reasons to fear flying: coffee. The May 24th issue of Aujourdhui (Jean-Marc Ducos) P.15 reported the plight of an Air France passenger who drank a cup of coffee tainted with caustic solvent normally reserved to purge the airplane’s water ducts. The passenger’s esophagus has been so severely damaged that he can no longer eat normally or work. His most recent operation will attempt to reconstruct the esophagus.
About 50,000 passengers receive coffee each day. One of them was very unlucky. The airplane in question was an Airbus A-320. The manual stipulates the use of a caustic solvent to clean out the water ducts. Other airplanes such as the Boeing, use another disinfectant, oxygenated water.
Moral of the story: When you fly, drink gin, vodka, or anything in a ‘foolproof’ pop-top can.
Posted by admin on under Europe Accommodation |
Yesterday I visited the Leith end of the Water of Leith Walkway, the 12 mile path alongside the Water of Leith river from Balerno to Leith, through central Edinburgh. You can read more about the Water of Leith in Edinburgh off the beaten track. Leith is Edinburgh’s port and the area has been revamped recently.
There is a collection of reproductions of paintings illustrating the heyday of Leith port at the side of the walkway.
The massive offices of the Scottish Executive are in Leith and blocks of luxury waterside flats have sprung up. The Royal Yatch Britainnia, is moored at the side of the Ocean Terminal shopping and leisure centre. There are numerous cafes, pubs and restaurants.
If you’d like to stay in Leith when you’re in Edinburgh the Harbour Apartments are a good choice. In June if you stay for 3 nights during the week it costs ВЈ75 a night for an apartment for 2 guests. In low season I have seen them for as little as ВЈ35 a night. There’s private parking and free entry to the adjacent health club.
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