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Okay, the economy is terrible, and many people are worried about finances. But that doesn't necessarily mean you should stop traveling. You need to know how to travel smarter because if you have some extra cash, now may the time to head to the City of Light for shopping and more. 

Even if it this wasn't true, one thing that politicians, lawyers and their assorted hangers-on are good at is spending money. So it's no surprise that Washington has one of the most vibrant culinary scenes in the United States, though it may be a surprise to you. Grizzy Chinese take out or Quel est Bistromania?

Tourists in Paris are wrong. Most Parisians would agree with this statement, show a bare smile, then shrug, as if to say, “Well, what do expect?” But the Parisians are wrong about the wrongness of tourists. Tourists think the Parisians, and the French generally, go out of their way to be unpleasant or just indifferent to them. Look, they will say, at that café waiter who lives off me and people like me and hardly shows any courtesy, let alone respect. Then they flash a weak smile and attempt a shrug, which usually fails them, as if to say... well, they don’t know what to say, so they make a fist and stick it in their pockets.

Beirut, with its' million inhabitants, conveys a sense of life and energy. Maybe it's due to the capital's (Lebanon, darling) geographical position, jutting into the sparkling blue sea, a backdrop of mountains. The city buzzes, so do the people, in spite of all the problems, especially when they're eating, drinking, down-timing. 

To eat at the best restaurants and know good food is one thing, to be a “foodie” and know what to order at a gastronomic establishment is another, to sample almost everything and be blown away is not only rare, it is the sought after unicorn.

Most people don’t realize how truly small Edinburgh, Scotland is. For all its hype as one of the leading cities to visit in the United Kingdom, Edinburgh is really just a small, compact, accessible, charming, very friendly, exquisitely posh village that one can walk in a few hours, and visit within a few days

“Guy Martin Un Artiste en Cuisine” an extraordinary documentary, six months in the making, follows the super-chef as he climbs mountains checking out cows and goats for his cheese, takes time out to ski down to wine cellars, markets, at caviar tastings the precious grains sensuously nibbled from the back of his hand.

I never thought I would be reading a limited edition of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” in Russian looking down at Notre Dame de Paris. A little bookshop Gilbert Jeune with scratched floors and dusty shelves on the corner of St. Michel Street and St. Denis Boulevard in the Latin Quarter is a beloved place of Parisian students. Besides a rare collection of French classics, from Emile Zola toAlexander Dumas, the bookshop offers more than books, which I was about to find out.

People are looking at my shoes. That much I’m sure of. And they’ve been doing it for nearly a month. It’s very strange. I’ve never thought Parisians were shoe fetishists, but it’s happening several times a day.

The first review I read of Chamarré Montmartre was Emmanuel Rubin’s in Figaroscope where he gave it a busted/broken heart and called it sad Caribbean stuff (apparently conflating the Caribbean and Indian oceans, which occupied the blogospere’s schadenfreude quotion for some time.) In any case, a busted heart, like a NYTimes theater/movie pan, is pretty hard to get up from. 

Paris in December is cold, but absolutely fabulous. The city is filled with tourists who are looking for extreme romantic lights of Paris when the temperature is below zero and the Parisians are consumed with the thoughts on end-of-year taxes and shopping for Christmas presents,, meaning no foire gras with crispy toasts, no oysters sprinkled with lemon-vinegar juice and no Bordeaux wine for a while. Or that’s how an economy-conscious American would think, but not a French one.

The first time I ever applied eyeshadow, I was probably nine, it was probably my sister’s makeup, and I’m absolutely positive the eyeshadow was robin’s egg blue. I looked gorgeous. All I had needed was to put on her glittering white lipstick (am I showing my age here?), and any man would want to marry me. Right there. On the spot. The only problem—besides the fact that I was only nine—was that the lipstick had not yet been opened. So what did I do? I did what any younger sister would do at a time like that. I opened it. I applied it. And there, in the mirror before me, was the new me, the most beautiful new woman in the world. Forget that I looked like I had white-out on my prepubescent lips. I was now myself, only better. And that’s what makeup has always meant to me. The tool that brings out the “better” version of the person in the mirror.

Place of Honour on tables at Alain Passard's L'Arpege last week – outsize pumpkins, courgettes, knobbly Jerusalem artichokes, looking wacky on classic white starched table linen. Passard knows how to make a statement – without making a statement, read minimal. 

Ever since my mother died almost 15 years ago (has it really been that long?), and my dad immediately after, and all the family I’ve ever had has either grown up and moved away or flown off into the great beyond, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do at Christmas. It’s a little bit hard to have a huge family Christmas when “huge” and “mother” have been taken out of the equation.

The Mona Bismarck Foundation is currently holding an exposition of photographs of Sri Lanka by Kim Powell. Entitled “Serendipity,” this exclusive, one-woman exhibit features images of the country and its people that Powell recorded during a four-day excursion there in 2007.  

This is the season to bring a long saved wine out of your cellar or closet and serve it with a festive holiday dinner. After all, one of the pleasures of having a collection of wine is that you buy them when the bottles are young (and, until recent years, relatively affordable). This is also the time when you will have the best selection of wines from a new vintage. But wines are to drink, not to collect, like postage stamps on an album page.

It's a yearly tradition for the Bonjour Paris team to thank our readers, writers, contributors and all the others who are part this very special site about France and all things French. This community is our strength. Some people have been a part of the site since it launched more than 14 years ago on AOL while others found us when we migrated to our own home on the Internet—and both are family. As usual, I send my warmest holiday greetings, my hope that everyone will be blessed with health and happiness and, most importantly, may there be peace and greatest acceptance of others throughout the world..

Now a bit of disclosure. While I talk like I know what I’m doing in the food biz and I’ve been cooking since I was about 5 years old, I’ve had only one formal 3 hour class (with Luigi Buitoni, champion chef at his Locanda Della Rocca in Paciano, Perugia, Umbria) and a two year weekly tutorial of about two hours each with the chef at a sleezy college humor magazine near Boston. My daughter on the other hand, holds a certificate of completion of cooking school and my wife has cooked for over 50 years. So much of what I pontificate about comes from osmosis not education.