Parisians were encouraged to roller-blade, bike or stroll through the City of Light on Sunday for a car-free day intended to leave the streets vacant for slower, clean forms of transport.
More: Paris experiments with ‘car-free day’ across the city – The Local
If you’re one of the many Maltese people who visits Italy almost every year, you’d be happy to know there’s now a new destination to add to your list: Bordeaux. And because it’s not in Italy, it could give you a much-needed break from Tuscany, Sicily, or wherever else you usually venture to for good food and wine in the countryside [ . . .]
More at: Why Bordeaux Is The New Tuscany For Every Maltese Person Who Loves Wine – Lovin Malta
These days it’s the insider’s way to best understand the region’s famous wines.
The wine region of Bordeaux, long willfully fusty, is in the midst of a modern tourist boom. Last year saw the opening of the swirling aluminum-and-glass La Cité du Vin, a spectacular high-tech museum devoted to wine and culture. And this July brought a two-hour high-speed train link from Paris.
Now you’ll want to venture beyond town for the real fun: The appellation’s celebrated wine châteaux, whose doors were long shut to tourists, have unveiled dazzling wineries designed by big-name architects. And more than a dozen of them, including billionaire-owned Château Cos d’Estournel, have begun welcoming wine lovers for lunch, dinner, and even overnight stays in opulent rooms overlooking the vines.
In the city of Bordeaux proper, beautiful 18th century buildings have shed their soot to stand gleaming once again as part of a renewal project that helped the municipality gain Unesco World Heritage status in 2007. Jazzy wine bars and inventive chefs have swept in since, upending decades of heavy cuisine doused in buttery sauces. [ . . . ]
More: Legendary Bordeaux Chateaux Are Now Open for Meals and Sleepovers – Bloomberg
An excerpt from Alice Waters’s new book, ‘Coming to My Senses’
“When I got back from France, I moved into an old Victorian house on Dwight Way. I felt like the most sophisticated person. I just thought I knew everything. I wanted to live like the French. As luck would have it, a Frenchman, Pierre Furlan, lived downstairs from me in the basement apartment, and he would pop into our lives every so often.
Sometimes when we were experimenting with French recipes, Pierre Furlan would call upstairs, ask what we were having for dinner, come up, and cook. He knew how to cook and would make corrections and additions or give bits of advice if we were going off the rails. At the time, I was making a lot of buckwheat crêpes and watching plenty of Julia Child. She was speaking my language. She was very funny and grounded — she’d drop the chicken on the floor, pick it up, and keep right on going — and I wanted to master the art of French cooking, exactly that. I did buy her book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but it was more or less incomprehensible to me; it had no pictures, long and detailed recipes, and lots of writing about precision. It was daunting. But luckily there was the TV show — I loved her manner, and she was a Francophile just like I was. “[ . . . ]
Read More: The Making of a Counterculture Cook – Eater
On a warm August day, the world’s most famous boulevard, the Champs-Elysées, is heaving.Li-na and Zhangli from Shanghai, laden with bags from designer stores, are here to go shopping, while James from Illinois wants to climb the Arc de Triomphe.“I’ve already done the Eiffel Tower, Sacré Coeur and Notre Dame,” he says.
“Tomorrow it’s Versailles.” Bernard, from neighbouring Belgium, is in the French capital for a short break “because it’s beautiful and not far by train”.In the tree-lined street’s grand flagship stores and myriad eateries you can almost hear the collective sigh of relief: after a “catastrophic” 2016 for tourism following a series of terrorist attacks in France, the visitors are back – and in record numbers [ . . . ]
Read Full Story: Tourists defy Trump to return to Paris in record numbers after terror attacks | World news | The Guardian
The famous French game has been played at Place Dauphine, by the River Seine in Paris, since the early 20th Century.
Paris officials have sparked outrage by installing ‘anti-petanque’ measures at a tourist hotspot in a bid to stop players creating dust and making too much noise.
The famous French game has been played at Place Dauphine, by the River Seine, since the early 20th Century.
But the city council has decided to ‘reduce the surface available’ to enthusiasts after receiving a series of complaints about the noise and dust it creates.
Jean-François Legaret, Mayor of the city’s 1st arrondissement, confirmed that the site was due to be covered in new plants and other obstacles.
The Place Dauphine, by Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris, currently attracts up to ten separate games at any one time.
Tourists, including many from the UK, mill around watching and taking pictures of the action, just as they have done since the early 20th Century.
‘We’re part of Paris’s history,’ said Alain Groulet, 72, who was playing on the square with a group of friends on Sunday morning [ . . . ]
Read Full Story: ‘Anti-petanque’ measures built at Paris tourist hotspot | Daily Mail Online
Pas De Merde 