France
Nov 27th, 2006
The Pain Of Booking Awards Travel
Last night I spent about an hour and half on the phone with Alaska Airlines booking tickets for our trip to France next year. And although the customer service woman was very friendly and helpful, it was still far more complicated than I was expecting. Eventually, plans had to change in order for us to get tickets at all.
Originally I wanted us to fly in to Amsterdam and then out of Nice. Not possible. And so after going through every possible iteration of date change and arrival/departure city change we finally settled on flying into and out of Paris (not ideal, but we’ll live with it), pushing departure back a week and taking on an additional day at the end.
The net result of all the changes is that we have decided to skip Amsterdam this time and concentrate exclusively on France. This is not entirely a bad thing, I think. After our last hectic trip (to five countries in 18 days) it will be nice to take things at a (slightly) more relaxed pace. Well, at least as relaxed as any vacation I’m planning can be.
I will update the rest of the site to reflect these changes in our plans. Now that we have our departure firmly settled, I’m really looking forward to diving in to the meat of the planning, including booking an apartment for our week in Paris.
Posted in France, Travel Planning | No Comments
May 5th, 2006
Blue
There’s a scene in Blue
Binoche plays Julie Vignon, the wife of France’s most celebrated composer. The movie opens with a car accident that claims the life of her husband and child and leaves Vignon in the hospital. When she recovers she decides to start her life over, selling her house and all her possessions and moving into a small Paris apartment.
The plot revolves around her attempts to get her life together and various outsiders attempts to her husbands final composition which was almost complete at the time of his death. By the end of the movie we’re not entirely sure that it wasn’t in fact Vignon herself who was responsible for her husbands music.
It’s a beautiful film, and I highly recommend it. It is the first in the Three Colors Trilogy
Posted in France, Movies | No Comments
Apr 21st, 2006
Another apartment rental site
A rental site called Paris Attitude, found via the Paris Voice Magazine web site.
This one looks like it has some good inexpensive rental units. And lots of them.
Added to the sidebar.
Posted in France | No Comments
Apr 19th, 2006
Cinèma Trail
Cinèma Trail is a new website produced by PDIF.com, the official tourist website for Paris, to coincide with their new promotion campaign “Paris au Cinèma”. Here is an article from the New York Time about it.
I must say I love the idea behind the promotion, but the web site is a bit flawed in the execution. For instance there is a section called Wanders and Walks. Now a title like that would lead one to believe that is contained walking tours of locations used in various films, but not really. It instead offers general descriptions of films shot at in a particular location without providing details.
I was hoping for something more along the lines of the Rick Steves walking tours. In particular, a map with spots marked off and a short description of what was shot there and when.
I think this is still a good idea, and perhaps someone will come up with something along these lines sometime.
Posted in France, Movies | No Comments
Mar 31st, 2006
We’ll Always Have Paris
We’ll Always Have Paris
I just finished reading this book yesterday and really enjoyed it. It covers the sexual underside of Parisian history through out the last 100 years, but hangs it on the framework of the author’s first year in Paris and the impending birth of his first child. They are strange bed fellows to be sure and while both strands of the book work independently, they don’t really work together. But that’s ok, because as I said they are both interesting and entertaining in and of themselves.
I got a number of good movie recommendations from the book, and immediately added them to my Netflix queue.
Posted in Books, France | No Comments
