Two weeks ago, I ran my longest race of 2017: the Disneyland Paris-Val d’Europe half marathon, part of Run Disney France’s Magic Run Weekend. My previous races this year were the Cherry Blossom 10 miler and the Capitol Hill Classic 10K. I’ll cap off my running season with the Marine Corp Marathon’s 10K. I’m not quite ready to commit to training for a full marathon yet though it’s definitely a distance I’m looking to doing next year 😉 If you read my goals for the Disneyland Paris half, you saw that they didn’t include a specific time. I just wanted to complete the course, make some new memories with my bestie Caitlin and snap some fun pics with Disney characters as I ran through my old ...
France
My Trip To Paris By RaShonda’s Explore Savvy
RaShonda of Explore Savvy is one of my favourite local travel blogger. Between her recent trips to Cuba or Milan and her scooping of fabulous cheap or error fare her facebook and twitter feeds give me major wanderlust – and make me want to buy all the airline tickets! Earlier in the year, she posted about an […] ...
My Trip To Paris By RaShonda’s Explore Savvy
RaShonda of Explore Savvy is one of my favourite local travel blogger. Between her recent trips to Cuba or Milan and her scooping of fabulous cheap or error fare her facebook and twitter feeds give me major wanderlust - and make me want to buy all the airline tickets! Earlier in the year, she posted about an error fare on TAP Portugal, which I quickly snagged for a cheap Thanksgiving get-away. I mean, $280 round trip to Lisbon? How could I not jump on that? She also took advantage of the mistake, but rather than just stay in Portugal, opted to hop along to Paris. Here are some highlights from her trip to Paris earlier this year. WHAT BROUGHT ME TO PARIS As Laetitia mentioned, I came across ...
My Trip To Paris (And Champagne) By Alison
There's no conversation I love more than when one of friends tells me that they're off to Paris. OK, there is: the conversation we have when they get back full of stories from my hometown and appreciation for it. So I was thrilled when my friend Alison of Bon Vivant DC told me she was stopping in Paris in between visits to Portugal and Champagne. OK, I was jealous too... but thrilled mostly. Alison runs a wine consulting business so I knew she'd have a fabulous trip. Here's an overview of how it went, in Alison's own words. WHAT BROUGHT ME TO PARIS Paris has always been my favorite city, so when I found myself with five days between a vacation in Portugal and a weeklong industry event in ...
Postcard from Paris: 5 Spots Where I Love to Grab a Cup of Coffee
When I left Paris to move to Washington, DC thirteen years ago (**le gasp**) the city didn't even have a single Starbucks yet. Now they're everywhere, and I'm not saying that's a good thing but I do want to point out that the coffee scene has changed in a few years. Of course, Paris has always been known for its street-side cafés, where you can grab a quick noisette at the counter or linger for hours at the terrace people watching and sipping a café crème. Those were never really about the coffee and new cafés, inspired by the artisanal coffee culture in Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. have popped up all over town. In many of those, it's not unusual to hear English spoken fluently behind ...
A Taste of Lille ~ Méert’s Legendary Waffles
No visit to the Northern French city of Lille would be complete without a stop at 27 rue Esquermoise. This address has delighted local gourmands since 1761. Initially, it was a humble chocolaterie and ice cream shop until it was taken over in 1849 by Michael Paulus Gislinus Méert who turned the shop into a local institution with its signature thin, gaufres filled with Madagascar vanilla. Today, the former confectionery is an elegant patisserie, salon de thé and gourmet gourmet restaurant and a must-visit sight if you're in the area. I don't remember the first time I had one of Méert's waffles, but I must have been a baby -- I'm a second generation Lilloise after all, though we moved to ...
April’s Fool: A fishy Fête in France…
The origins of April Fools are widely debated but the most commonly accepted explanation credits France for starting the holiday. That's right. It all always come back to the French somehow ;-) According to this theory, April's Fool goes back to 1564 when King Charles XIV changed the calendar around, moving the start of the year from late March to early January. Not everyone was quick to catch onto the change and some people kept celebrating New Year during the week that fell between March 25th and April 1st. And these people had jokes played on them. Pranksters would surreptitiously stick paper fish to their backs and so victims of the pranks were called Poisson d’Avril, or April ...
Life Goes On~Celebrating Beaujolais Nouveau in Washington, DC
I'm not exactly in a celebratory mood these days, but life goes on. Paris is about life, about being at a terrasse right now etc. Life has to go on and this week life includes the release of the Beaujolais Nouveau, which always takes place on the third Thursday of November (or midnight that Wednesday!) Here are a few, selected spots where you can partake in some Gamay-drinking in Washington, D.C. BITRO DU COIN Still THE place to be at midnight when Beaujolais Nouveau is released. It's probably too late to get reservations for dinner, but show up around 10PM when they start clearing out the tables. The Beaujolais typically starts pouring 11PM, which technically is well past midnight in ...
Dîner en Blanc – Part Deux, DC Edition
When Washington played host to its first Diner en Blanc last year, the main complaints from participants concerned the location. Yards Park in Southwest DC was a beautiful venue, don't get me wrong, but it didn't strike anyone as particularly iconic. Compared to some of the other famous locations where the all-white diners have popped up across the globe -- Lincoln Center in New York, the Trocadero with the Eiffel Tower as backdrop or on 6 bridges over the Seine in Paris, Covent Garden in London, Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles to name a few -- the 42-acre development on the Anacostia River waterfront was a bit lacking in Washington monuments and recognizable sites. It was also a bit out of the ...
A Taste of Nice: Farmers’ Market Petits Farcis
Last Christmas, I spent a few days in the South of France with my family. We started in Marseille, where my mother was born and where she grew up, then made our way to Gould to spend the holidays with my uncle Philippe who lives there with his family. Afterwards, we made our way to Nice, on the French Riveria. France's fifth largest city gets a pretty bad rep. It's like the Florida of France, where grandparents retire (my grandmother herself considered moving there for a while) and older Brits winter. It's no Cannes and it's no Monaco. But it's got a lot to offer: stunning Art Deco architecture, great museums (Chagall and Matisse both used to call Nice their home), the promenade des ...
