Let's be honest, I'm a city baby and any flying animal that's not a pigeon is a pretty exotic bird for me! Bird-watching is not an activity I typically engage in... unless the birds in question happen to be drawn on urban walls that is ;-) Thanks to the Audubon Society and the Gilter & ____ Gallery, the Washington Heights/West Harlem neighbourhoods is just the perfect spot to catch a flock of colourful birds! All in graffiti of course... Right now there are a few dozens murals of varying scale scattered around uptown Manhattan, and eventually the goal is to have street artists and muralists paint over 314 different species of North American birds that a sobering 2014 Audubon ...
New York
Postcard from NYC: 5 Things I Ate Last Week
Other than a week in Portugal for Thanksgiving, I don't have a lot of trips planned this year. At least not fun trips... So I'm determined to make the most out every single work trip I have, starting with the one I just took last week to New York City. And that, of course, includes enjoying some good eats around town. There's no shortage of restaurants in Manhattan. If anything the options are limitless and a bit overwhelming when you don't have a lot of free time. Since I stayed at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown many of the spots I ended up at are concentrated in that part of town. Here are some of my favourite eats from my last "work-cation" in New York City: ALL THE PINK PASTRIES AT ...
Postcard from New York: Going to A Late Show Taping
Here's something free and unique to do if you have a spare afternoon in New York City: attend the live taping of a late (or late-late) night talk-show! I say afternoon, because a) while the shows air in the evening, tapings typically happen earlier that day b) even though you have to book your tickets in advance, there's a lot of waiting around in lines involved before you can actually take your place in the audience. Here’s what my experience attending a live taping of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” was like. But first, why The Late Show with Stephen Colbert? I actually watch the show every day and I absolutely love Stephen Colbert. I love his smart humour, and think his guests tend ...
Highlights from Best Of France 2015 in New York
Over the weekend, I made a quick trip to New York City to check out the third edition of Best of France, an event organized by the New York French community to showcase French brands in the United States. Yes, there was wine. Yes, there was cheese. Yes, there were stripped shirts - including the world's biggest marinière courtesy of Breton brand Saint James. There were even cancan dancers from the Moulin Rouge. But beyond the expected images of France, there were also US-based French start ups, major brands like Air France, L'Oreal and Ariane Espace, as well as small businesses representing the best of France's savoir faire from cakes and foie gras to apps, knives, bikes, ...
Gad Elmaleh in DC – Part Trois, Now All In English
Le revoici, le revoilà! Gad Elmaleh repasse au Birchmere, avec un petit changement qui n'est pas négligeable: le comedien fait son show en Anglais!! It's hard enough being funny in your native language, let alone in a foreign one. Seinfeld, for example, was notoriously bad when dubbed in French, and the humour didn't quite translate. And yet, that’s exactly the personal challenge that French funnyman (and Seinfeld BFF) Gad Elmaleh has set for himself. After performing sold-out shows in Washington, DC twice in 2013 (in April and September - you can read my recap from the September show right here), the comedien is back for a third time. This fall, he’ll try to branch out of the ...
Dîner en Blanc – New York Edition
Last night, I joined 5,000 revelers at Pier 26 in Tribeca for the fifth edition of New York's Dîner en Blanc. Being involved with the DC event, which this year will take place on August 29th and involve 2,500 guests, I can appreciate the sheer logistics of getting all of us, carrying our own tables, chairs, tableware, centerpieces and food, there! Our evening started at Washington Square Park, one of 24 meeting spots throughout the city. Well, really it started on a bus to New York... but let's not go there ;-) Following a quick glass of rosé on tap at Claudette (no it wasn't weird at all to show up there with 2 chairs, I swear...), my friend Caitlin and I met Katie, our very ...
Paris vs New York: The Striped T-Shirt Edition
Paris mon Amour or New York my Love? That's the question that JCrew's little sister Madewell is asking in its second collaboration with the French label Sézane®. After a successful first capsule collection last year, Madewell x Sézane is back with flared jeans, a very Parisian-chic little black dress, Ulysse lace-up sandals, accessories like a flirty printed scarf to wrap effortlessly around your neck, a "Féminin et Masculin” gray sweatshirt that's guaranteed to sell out as fast as the "Superbe" one did in 2014, and, my personal favourite, this set of two striped tees: J'adore New York, but Paris will always be my home so I just ordered the red-striped shirt. I can't wait to show it off ...
Liberty Enlightening the World… For 130 Years
Did you know that the Statue of Liberty, this universal symbol of freedom, is technically French? Yep, one of America’s most iconic monuments was born in France to Mr. Frederic Bartholdi, a French sculptor who modeled her after his mother, and given to the people of America as a gift of friendship from the French people. 130 years ago today, she arrived in new York Harbour after a long trip across the Atlantic Ocean in 350 individual pieces. These pieces took about a year to be reassembled and the 450,000-pound statue was officially dedicated on October 28, 1886, by President Cleveland. To celebrate the anniversary of the Statue of Liberty's arrival in the United States, google created a ...
Hermione & the Spirit of Lafayette Back in the US
Nope, I'm not talking about a Hermione Granger, the Harry Potter character, but Hermione, the Frigate of Freedom, a ship. The replica of the ship that brought the Marquis de Lafayette to the United State some 235 years ago to carry the message from King Louis XVI that France was going to aid the colonies. In 1997, a group of people came up with the idea of reconstructing the frigate using the same building methods applied in the original. Some 17 years later, on April 18, 2015, she left Rochefort in France to set sail for Virginia and retrace a journey through American history. For the past month, L'Hermione plied across the Atlantic, retracing Lafayette's journey. She's set to arrive in ...
Postcard from New York: Meow Parlour
Crumbs & Whiskers' kickstarter campaign has raised over $35,000, has gotten all of the necessary permits from the D.C. government and, this just in, officially signed a lease for a Georgetown location. So Washington is definitely getting a cat café in the near future though it probably won't open until late summer. And until it does, I thought I'd share what I hope Crumbs & Whiskers will be like. And that's basically Meow Parlour. Meow Parlour is New York's first, adn to date only, cat café. Or perhaps I should say a space with cats, where you can bring coffee purchased at another location around the corner. Unlike Paris' cat cafe, Cafe des Chats (which actually is more of a ...