I guess it makes sense to say “happy hours,” afterall.
(photo taken in Amiens, France)

From Timesonline:

“Mark Boyle was a man with a dream. He was so convinced that a world without the evils of money is possible that he set out to walk from Britain to India without spending a penny in order to prove it.

But Mr Boyle, who hoped to reach Gandhi’s birthplace within two-and-a-half years, had reckoned without one sizeable stumbling block: the French.

Specifically…”

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Usually in the news, they say that the euro has risen to a record high, but I see it more like this: the dollar has plummeted to a record low, it’s never been this low. Ever. It’s like the peso! This means one euro equals $1.52, and that means one dollar equals about 66 (euro) cents. Ouch.

Needless to say, it’s probably not the best time to come to France with those pathetically wimpy dollars. [photo: Joel Saget]

Since last week’s early release of the new movie (Bienvenue chez les ch’tis) about the particular group of northern French people, Les Ch’tis  seem to be the new black in France even before its official opening yesterday. We went to the movies at Cité Europe in Calais (the north) where there are 12 movie theatres. Four were dedicated to Bienvenue chez les ch’tis. All four were sold out and jam packed so we went to see Cloverfield.

Anyway. On to pastries. The tarte au ch’uc / sugar tart, is a typical Ch’ti pastry and so is pronounced “tarte au ch’uc” (shuke). These are not very easy to find unless you’re in the north. We spotted them at a bakery in Amiens where we visited last Friday. It’s basically a pastry crust with no filling but with sugar on top, as far as I can tell, but very tasty. If you ever meet a Ch’ti, he’ll reminisce for days about them…in addition to another Ch’ti specialty: beer soup.

Related: French Pastries

This photo is from a “fancy” bakery’s window display in Wimereux, a dingy yet upscale beach town in the north of France – because cookies are starting to pop up here and there. It’s disorienting. Why? While these are cute, they aren’t necessarily enticing and who would choose cookies over French pastries…which RULE?

Not knocking cookies. It’s just that I can just make any ole cookie at home, and we are in France afterall and France has amazing pastries! Why buy a cookie when you can get a Paris Brest or Mille feuille or Tarte au n’importe quoi or Mousse au chocolat or lots of other mouth watering delicate pastries? Cookies, no matter how tasty, just seem so basic. I guess they’re la tendance / the trend – and trendy things seem better. But they aren’t. Necessarily.

Related: French Pastries 101

I grew up in the beach communities of L.A. so when strolling along the bike path or on the sand, it wasn’t often (or ever) that I’d come across anything like a 400 year old fort. It’s different if you’re on the beach in France, especially in the north.

That, to me, is the beauty of Europe. Practically everywhere, you’ll “run into” things with a long history: it makes you wonder what has happened during all of those hundreds of years inside this coastal fort. Sordid, treacherous plots? Perhaps bloody and violent wars? And thrown into the mix: love stories and happier endings? Probably not.

Stumbling upon Fort Mahon Plage while exploring the north of France in Ambleteuse, which sits at the estuary of the river, Slack (there’s even a town called Slack too!), was another reminder that Europe….is old. Really, really old. And cool to someone who has grown up in a relatively new country.

Henry VIII of England had two forts built here to uphold his powerful presence towards the French kings. Henry II of France eventually conquered the forts in 1556, after killing all the English prisoners.

It was Sébastien Vauban who constructed Fort Mahon at the end of the 17th century, and because of the preservation and renovation efforts by the “Association of the friends of Ambleteuse Fort,” Fort Mahon is the only coastal fort that’s left.

The fort isn’t open to visitors in February but you can visit it from Easter to Toussaint (April to November): 3pm – 7pm on Sundays. In July and August 3pm – 7pm on Saturdays and Sundays. Entrance fee: 3 euros / 1.50 euros (children). For more information telephone: 06 75 52 73 57

Paris Prêt-á-Porter / Paris Fashion Week

Monday 25 February
10.00 Atsuro Tayama Salle Pleyel
252 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré
11.00 Véronique Leroy Espace Pierre Cardin
1/3 Avenue Gabriel
12.00 Gaspard Yurkievich Le Carrousel du Louvre
99 Rue de Rivoli
13.00 Robert Normand Le Carrousel du Louvre
99 Rue de Rivoli
14.30 Christian Dior Espace Ephémère Tuileries
Jardin des Tuileries
15.30 Isabel Marant Espace Eiffel
Quai Branly
16.30 Sharon Wauchob Palais de Tokyo
13 Avenue du Président Wilson
17.30 Undercover La Cigale
120 Boulevard Rochechouart
18.30 Maison Martin Margiela Palais de Bercy
8 Boulevard de Bercy
19.30 Vivienne Westwood Hotel Westin
3 Rue de Castiglione
20.30 Yohji Yamamoto Palais de la Bourse
Place de la Bourse

Tuesday 26 February
09.30 Balenciaga (Invitation)
10.30 Junya Watanabe (Invitation)
11.30 Tsumori Chisato Le Carrousel du Louvre
99 Rue de Rivoli
12.30 M&F Girbaud Le Carrousel du Louvre
99 Rue de Rivoli
13.30 Lutz Espace Pierre Cardin
1/3 Avenue Gabriel
14.30 Viktor & Rolf (Invitation)
15.30 Issey Miyake Musée de l’Homme
17 Place du Trocadéro
16.30 Ann Demeulemeester Couvent des Cordeliers
15 rue de l’Ecole de Médecine
17.30 Comme des Garcons (Invitation)
19.00 Jean-Paul Gaultier 325 rue Saint-Martin
Paris 3e
20.00 Véronique Branquinho Maison des Métallos
94 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud
21.00 Loewe Opéra Comique
Place Boieldieu

Wednesday 27 February
10.00 Karl Lagerfeld Espace Eiffel
Quai Branly
11.00 Andrew Gn Le Carrousel du Louvre
99 Rue de Rivoli
12.00 Akris Le Carrousel du Louvre
99 Rue de Rivoli
13.00 Emanuel Ungaro Le Carrousel du Louvre
99 Rue de Rivoli
14.00 Costume National Le Carrousel du Louvre
99 Rue de Rivoli
15.00 Dries van Noten Manège du Grand Palais
Avenue Franklin Roosevelt
16.00 Christian Lacroix Espace Ephémère Tuileries
Jardin des Tuileries
17.00 Requiem Le Carrousel du Louvre
99 Rue de Rivoli
18.00 Givenchy Carreau du Temple
3 Rue Dupetit Thouars
19.30 Hussein Chalayan (Invitation)
20.30 Bernhard Willhelm Maison des Métallos
94 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud
(more…)

Already blazing throughout the internet, here’s a video of Sarkozy greeting people at the Agriculture Salon in Paris where he meets a man who doesn’t want to shake his hand. It makes us laugh so hard.

Man: Ah non, touche moi pas / oh no, don’t touch me.

Sarko: Casse-toi alors / Then get lost.

Man: Tu me salis / You’ll get me dirty (You disgust me).

Sarko: Casse-toi alors pauvre con / Then get lost, dumb ass.

Watch the video

We’ve been in search for a gift for one of my friends, a Tintin fan. Tintin is not really in style in France at the moment so related gifts are hard to find. We lost hope after looking nearly everywhere – until we went to this chocolatier/patisserie in Boulogne-sur-mer. Along with some yummy pastries, they make chocolate masks of different characters. We saw them in their window display while walking by. There was one of the seven dwarves, Shrek, and Becassine, who to me, looks exactly like Tintin with a hat from Brittany. Anyway, they did do a Tintin mask so we ordered it earlier this week and picked it up today.

I think it’s a fun gift for chocoholic Tintin fans. It would be cool if they did a Milou (Snowy the dog) in white chocolate.

Aux Deux Cornets
(Chocolatier/Patisserie/Boulangerie/Salon de Thé)
91, rue Adolphe Thiers
62200 Boulogne-sur-mer France
Tel: 03 21 31 65 89

From news.com.au:

“FRENCH President Nicolas Sarkozy said he wants to see French cuisine listed as a world heritage item by the United Nations.

“Agriculture and the jobs which produce it every day are the source of our country’s gastronomic diversity. It is an essential element of our heritage,” Mr Sarkozy said at the opening of France’s huge annual agriculture show in Paris.

“That is why I want France to be the first country to apply to UNESCO for our gastronomic tradition to be recognised as a world heritage,” Mr Sarkozy said.

“We have the best gastronomy in the world,” he said.”

[source]

I’ve been wanting to write about the toxic and polluted Rhone River that scientists are calling, “The French Chernobyl” but I’ve been way too busy. LUCKILY, The Guardian wrote about it:

From a wooden jetty, Cédric Giroud gazed out over the wide bend of the river Rhône, a picturesque, dark blue expanse dotted with swans. “At midnight on summer nights, when I’d finished fishing and boxed up my catch, I’d slip into the water and swim in the moonlight,” he said.The swell in the Rhône at the Grand Large just outside Lyon draws tens of thousands of French tourists on holiday weekends. It is a haven for rowers, sailors, fishermen and children feeding ducks. But under the crystal clear water lurks an environmental disaster the conservation group WWF is calling “a French Chernobyl”.

The French government has banned the consumption of fish from the length of the Rhône – where it enters France from the Swiss Alps all the way down to the Mediterranean – after local specialities such as bream, pikeperch, carp and catfish were found to contain high levels of the toxic chemicals PCBs. France’s second longest river has contaminated sediment in its bed and feeding fish have sent the toxins through the food chain. Environmentalists say the poison Rhône, which flows through tourist spots such as the papal city of Avignon down to the Camargue delta, is the tip of the iceberg of French industrial pollution, which the government has recklessly ignored for 20 years.

Freshwater fishermen talk of being suicidal. Local mayors and authorities have filed dozens of court cases after decades of campaigning by environmental groups. Research outside France has shown that PCBs – polychlorinated biphenyls once used in electrical generators, transformers and insulating fluid – cause infertility and birth defects in mammals. But the French government has not tested the toxic compounds’ impact or carcinogenic effect on humans. The WWF, backed by 300 doctors, is now lobbying the government to urgently fund its own tests on health implications.

The ban on consuming fish from the Rhône has been extended to other French rivers poisoned by PCBs: in Normandy the popular delicacy of eels from the Seine has been outlawed as well as fish from the Somme. Scientists predict more bans will follow. The Chernobyl comparison by the WWF comes not from the potential number of deaths of humans, but from successive French governments’ attitude of ignoring what campaigners call “a ticking timebomb”.

The poisoning was not uncovered by the state but by Giroud, who sells his catch to African, Asian and eastern European immigrants in the local markets of Lyon’s grey suburbs and old industrial heartlands. Giroud, 35, is the only commercial fisherman on the Grand Large in Décines, bringing in 10 tonnes a year and selling it himself. His freshwater fish – cheaper than sea fish and often sold for €2 (£1.50) a kilo – is a staple for poor people in the suburbs. Chinese and Vietnamese customers would use it for traditional dishes. One Turkish father used to buy 10kg to 20kg a week.

Then in 2004 birds started dying around the Grand Large. Tests showed it was avian botulism. “Although there was no effect on my fish, customers who had seen dead birds were wary,” said Giroud. “Off my own back, just to reassure them, I sent my perfect-looking fish to the lab. I expected excellent results.

“But the tests found a different, murkier poison – the fish contained…

More…

From Timesonline:

“Venetians reconstructing a gold-covered barge used by the doges of Venice until it was reduced to ashes by Napoleon have appealed to President Sarkozy of France to contribute to the cost “by way of reparation”.

The foundation behind the €20 million (£15 million) project wants France to make a financial contribution to compensate for what has been described as the wilful destruction of the barge, which was set ablaze during Napoleon’s occupation of Venice in 1798.

The Fondazione Bucintoro has written to President Sarkozy to ask France to contribute as a goodwill gesture to make amends for Napoleon’s “vandalism”.

The elaborate and imposing ducal barge, known as the Bucintoro, was a symbol both of the doge’s power and of the Venetian Republic’s mystical relationship with the sea and its once-extensive empire. The origin of the name is obscure but is thought to combine burcio, a traditional Venetian term for a lagoon vessel, with in oro, meaning covered in gold.

Venetian scholars believe that there were four…”

Read more

From the beach in Ambleteuse, France

More: Friday France Photos

Just released! These Moleskine Van Gogh Special Edition Sketch Books are normally only available at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam but now you can get them at Amazon.

Just like the Moleskine notebooks that famous artists uses, each book is covered in colored silk and features 40 sheets of heavy duty off-white drawing paper. The trademark Moleskine pocket is in the back cover and there is a sturdy elastic band that holds the book closed when not in use.

Get one now:

Moleskine Van Gogh Special Edition Sketch Books

About Moleskine and related links:
Moleskine Notebooks are French Again
Sketched Paris Guide Book
2008 Limited Edition Moleskines are Out!
Sketched Paris Guidebook Part Deux

These heart shaped cheeses (it doesn’t say which kind of cheese it is) must have been leftover from Valentine’s Day over at Philippe Olivier’s. They were on sale for 3.95 euros. ($5.78)

If you find yourself walking down rue Thiers in the heart of Boulogne-sur-mer (northern France) and don’t happen to see Philippe Olivier’s famous cheese shop, you will surely smell it. I’m not gonna lie: it stinks, and we were just there yesterday so imagine what summer smells like!

Philippe Olivier knows cheese and his family has been in business for 101 years, 4 generations of fromagers.

The list of awards they’ve won cannot fit on the longest scroll in France. it’s a true cheese lover’s paradise and a must visit when in the area.

We left with 10 pounds of cheese.

Philippe Olivier
30, Rue Adolphe Thiers
62200 Boulogne sur Mer, France
+33 3 21 31 94 74

Click on the image to see the report.

Related: 22,000 died amid delayed Bayer drug recall

From reuters:

Italian scientists say they have proved Napoleon was not poisoned, scotching the legend the French emperor was murdered by his British jailors.

Napoleon’s post-mortem said he died of stomach cancer aged 51, but the theory he was assassinated to prevent any return to power has gained credence in recent decades as some studies indicated his body contained a high level of the poison arsenic.

“It was not arsenic poisoning that killed Napoleon at Saint Helena,” said researchers at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics and the University of Pavia who tested the theory the British killed him while he was in exile on the South Atlantic island in 1821.

The Italian research — which studied hair samples from various moments in his life which are kept in museums in Italy and France — showed Napoleon’s body did have a high level of arsenic, but that he was already heavily contaminated as a boy.

The scientists used a nuclear reactor to irradiate the hairs to get an accurate measure of the levels of arsenic.

Looking at hairs from several of Napoleon’s contemporaries, including his wife and son, they found…

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I had nightmares after I saw this window display at the Palais Royal Gallery…

From nyt:

“He is a lieutenant so loyal that President Nicolas Sarkozy personally rewarded him with the party’s nomination for mayor of the affluent Paris suburb that Mr. Sarkozy himself long governed.

But now, David Martinon, the president’s spokesman, has abruptly withdrawn from the race. And it was the president’s own son Jean who forced him out.

“The conditions are no longer in place for me to lead the municipal campaign in Neuilly,” Mr. Martinon told reporters on Monday. “I am pulling out.”

Adding to the intrigue, Mr. Martinon said that he submitted his resignation as spokesman — but that Mr. Sarkozy refused to accept it.

With Mr. Sarkozy’s poll ratings in free fall, the fiasco in the suburb, Neuilly-sur-Seine, is the freshest sign of turmoil in his presidency.

His hyperactive style, long regarded as a welcome change from the torpor of the last days of the presidency of Jacques Chirac, is increasingly seen as movement without a goal. “It’s the law of the boomerang — the harder and farther you throw it, the faster and more violently it comes back,” Le Monde wrote in its editorial on Monday afternoon.

On Monday, Mr. Sarkozy’s popularity plunged to a new low of…”

continue reading

From AFP:

“Mr Rude, a new Mr Men character with a French accent and a flatulence problem, is threatening to put the wind up Anglo-French relations, reports said Monday.The new bright orange cartoon is the first with a foreign accent to join the children’s book and television series, whose more traditional characters include Mr Happy and Little Miss Helpful.

“Oh, parr-donne me!” says the ball-shaped figure in a heavy Gallic accent, after noisily breaking wind in a game where children are invited to pull his finger on the Mr Men website www.mrmen.com/uk.

“Oh, don’t seem soo sur-praased,” he adds, before emitting another fart. “You pulled it.”

A new series of the Mr Men show, featuring the classic childrens’ characters, will start later this month on television channel Five, which insists it did not intend to offend the French.

“Mr Men is a comedy show for four to seven-year-olds … The fact Mr Rude has a French accent is meant to be light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek and no offence to the French people is intended,” a Five spokesman told the Daily Telegraph.

The French embassy in London refused to comment, but a source quoted by the daily said: “It is obviously meant in a light-hearted way but it won’t improve Anglo-French relations.”

A spokeswoman for Chorion, the new show’s makers, defended the use of a French accent. “It is a kids’ comedy show, it is not meant to be offensive or anything like that,” she said.

In the late 19th century a French baker, Joseph Pujol, who could break wind at will, played to packed houses with an act that included imitating animals and blowing out candles, styling himself Le Pitomane, or “fartiste”.”

From EUROC:

“Another unforeseen outcome of France’s smoking ban. That blue haze of cigarette smoke didn’t just add to the atmosphere of the nightclubs of Paris – it kept them smelling good, too.

For what is a nightclub, if not a place where hundreds of people gather, dance and get sweaty into the early hours? When half those punters were puffing away, the smell of smoke covered a multitude of sinners: Now the fanatically clean government has blown all traces of smoke away, clubgoers have discovered the inevitable outcome of all that hot and heavy action: Paris’s nightclubs stink like locker rooms.

Charles Bremner reports that a few nightclub owners have complained off the record that clients, and in particular women, are staying away. Of course, no-one wants to go on the record as owning a smelly nightclub, so the story isn’t over the French papers yet.

Short of fumigating the clubs every morning, what can be done? Are we about to see a new trend for strong perfumes to mask the smell – or are clubbers going to return to the days where ladies would carry perfumed bouquets to mask the smell of plague?

And before you think we’re having a go at the unwashed French, our correspondent in Britain tells us that if anything…”

continue reading

Margot Wallstrom, the communications commissioner (and 2nd in command in Brussels) recently said that she is fed up with the reign of old men governing the EU. I couldn’t be more in agreement with her.

So when I read that 18 year-old Diane Serrano is running for mayor of Florac, a village of 2,000 inhabitants in the south of France, it was more than welcome news. France and Europe in general, need a huge reform and it’s going to take younger people to make those huge changes happen. A crusty, 80-year old mayor may not want to do anything different than he’s done for the previous several decades, and he may not even care that the villages are dying and anyway, the crusty crowd should be retired. In the area where I live, there are at least three mayors over 70. That’s gotta change.

France has about 5,000 villages and cities and many of them are in a state of disrepair and no one is doing anything about it. It’s sad. But, Ms. Serrano wants to revitalize her village and though she is criticized for not having the experience behind her, she at least HAS the energy and new ideas and willingness to propose a an upward improvement. Hopefully, people in other cities and villages will be inspired by her – and we’ll start seeing much needed change in France.

Note: I’m not saying older mayors are incompetent, though some of them obviously are – I’m just saying that France would benefit from having more younger people in leadership roles.

[photo: Anne-Christine Poujoulat AFP]

Make history where it counts: on the lips. In honor of Valentine’s Day (which is coming up right around the corner!), The Institut Bonheur / Happiness Institute (yes that’s really what they’re called) is sponsoring a French Kiss World Record event. It’s being held at the Quais Rive Droite sous le Pont des Arts, so hurry!!! Sorry for the late notice. More about it at Facebook

[via]

February 11, 2008 marks the 150th anniversary of when a young shepherdess, Bernadette Soubirous, encountered the ghost of the Virgin Mary in Lourdes, France. It’s said that it was the Virgin Mary who gave her messages to share with the world, including where to find the healing waters.

Since that fateful day in 1858, millions of pious pilgrims flock to this tiny southwest French village for worshipping and to grab some of the healing water from the spring. In fact, an average of 5 million visitors go to Lourdes every year. It’s miraculously in the top 10 most visited attractions in France (the rest being mostly Paris landmarks). This year, they expect about 8 million people, and this Monday (February 11) alone for the Feast of our lady of Lourdes, they expect at least 50,000 people.

Here’s what’s happening if you find yourself in Lourdes on Monday 2/11/08:

9:00 am – Mass in English in the Crypt Chapel
9:30 am – International Mass at the Podium on the Prairie
11:00 am – Commemorating the 1st apparition followed by the Angelus at the Grotto
5:00 pm – Blessed sacrament procession
9:00 pm -Torchlight Marian Procession from the Grotto

Other Masses Crypt- 7:30 am, Rosary Basilica, 8:30 am -11:00 am, 6:00 pm

Tuesday and Wednesday, 2/12/08 and 2/13/08
There is Mass in English every day at 9:00 am in the Chapel of St. Gabriele

For more information contact the Information Center
Open daily: tel: +33 (0)5 62 42 78 78
or contact the official site for the 150th anniversary