BonjourParis

Last weekend, I climbed aboard the Eurostar between Paris and London and had a total immersion weekend of Anglophone deluxe chez the more than elegant Dorchester Hotel. But don’t even begin to think I wasn’t delighted to return home to the City of Light.

When travelers find themselves with an extra day in Paris with no preplanned agenda, what should they do?  You could revisit a favorite destination.  But it’s also an ideal opportunity to succumb to serendipity and experience something you’ve never contemplated. This is especially true for people here on business, or those who have been to the City of Light so many times that they don’t feel compelled to make a pilgrimage to the Louvre to pay homage to the Mona Lisa. 

It’s easy to announce a Bonjour Paris get together in our weekly newsletter. But will people actually come?  As it turned out, they did last weekend. Even though the group was from different places and had myriad vocations, everyone possessed a common bond; a committed love of France. Some had lived there, others aspire to and many consider France a second home (very possibly with residences there).

Spending an evening with super chef Michel Richard is enough to make anyone who loves food; its preparation and presentation know they’ve experienced an evening they’ll never forget. There’s no question Citronelle would compete with any of Paris’s three star Michelin eateries. Perfection is Michel Richard’s mantra. 

If you can hear audible sounds of relief and a woman’s tears rolling down her face, it’s because I’ve just received the best news a person could imagine. No, I didn’t win the lottery -- unless it’s the lottery of life. Serena Fawcett will have been released from Georgetown University Hospital by the time you read this. 

What’s the adage?  Fish and house guests smell after three days. It’s one thing if you’re on vacation and have rented a house in Provence. It’s quite another if you’re putting down roots for an indeterminate amount of time.  Or if you need to come and go.

One of the things French residents miss most when they’re in the US is getting their fill of French wines and cheeses. Washington, D.C.’s Steve Silver is one of the people in the industry who’s impacting and educating customers’ palates. In addition, he’s stopped print advertising and uses the Internet as his only marketing tool. At least three times a week, subscribers receive e-newsletters announcing special promotions and tastings.  I gravitate there to practice my French since some of the customers and many of the wine reps are French and/or Francophiles. And, there's nothing wrong with enhancing my sipping skills, in moderation, bien sur.  

He’s been anointed the number one restaurateur by Washingtonian Magazine’s restaurant guide, and is the Nation’s Capital’s celebrity chef par excellence. Michel Richard’s creativity at Citronelle, located on M Street, NW in Georgetown, is legendary.  Now Richard has headed east towards the Capitol and opened Central.  Get ready; you’re going to hear a lot about it. 

It is amazing people can be so oblivious to the nitty-gritty realities of living or owning real estate abroad. There’s nothing like the death of a spouse or a significant other to put your feet to the fire. 

If you live in or are visiting Paris, you’ll have a new choice of transportation. As of July 15th, 2007, the same mayor who introduced the Paris Plage is enabling people to hop on extremely sturdy bikes to get from here to there. Bertrand Delanoë, who’s responsible for widening Paris’s sidewalks, bus, taxi and bike lanes, would like nothing more than to see people ditch their cars, diminish traffic and hop on the eco-friendly “green” band wagon.

Buying or renting real estate in any big city can be a crapshoot.  What's in today may be out tomorrow. Neighborhoods change and not always for the better. Prices ebb and flow and who's to predict when it's the optimum time to be parting with hard-earned dollars?  Or signing on the bottom line of pages and pages of legalese that may make you real estate poor and feeling like an indentured slave. For example, there are times when you sense the bank or lending institution owns your house and not vice versa.  

When Nicolas Sarkozy was campaigning to be France’s president, the concept of the public having free access to museums had a nice ring. Who could possibly object to such a relatively benign objective?

It's only the very beginning of November and already people are slinking around the exterior walls of Paris's buildings. And now that clocks have been set back an hour (a week, sometimes more, earlier in France than the US), it feels as if it's the middle of the night.