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 ...
Paris
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 ...
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 ...
Happy St. Honoré to all the bakers & pastry chefs
The Catholic Church has a long tradition of assigning saints as special guardians and protectors of different trades and professions, and bakers and pastry chefs are no exception! Saint Honoré, the former Bishop of Amiens in the North of France, is revered by bakers as their patron saint, in part due to a church that was built in his honor in 1202 that became the site of the bakers' guilt. Technically, the patron saint of pastry chefs is St. Michel. But the line between boulangers (bakers) and pâtissiers (pastry chefs) is often blurred in France, with most boulangeries selling pastries in addition to bread. The St. Honoré also happens to be a delicious dessert made of cream puffs, puff ...
Postcard from France: Cour Bérard in Paris
Cour Bérard is a small street in the 4eme arrondissement in Paris. It's the home of the Moretti & Moretti, an art galerie which focuses on street art, digital art and installations. I headed to the galerie to check out its Konny Stedin exhibit. If you've been to Paris recently, I'm sure you spotted some of the German street artist's work. Her signature black and white portraits, with the red paint tears, can be seen throughout Paris, like this one below which I snapped a few years ago outside of Beaubourg But the best street art wasn't inside the gallery. It was actually outside, in the street, which was lined with graffiti black cats. Cour Bérard is a small street, but it's ...
January 11, 2015 – Far from the Eyes, Close to the Heart
This past week, the news hit very close to home. 300 meters close to home to be exact. Understandably, it was a difficult week. But living abroad when the eyes of the world are turned to dramatic events in your home country is not just difficult. It's frustrating. In moments like this, you long you be home and share in the collective sorrow, not just read about it in the news. I wish I could have been home this week, with my family, with my people. But I'm here. So on Wednesday evening, I did the next best thing. I gathered with friends and fellow expatriates outside of the Newseum, to mourn the 12 people murdered earlier that day in the Parisian newsroom of Charlie Hebdo and to make a ...
Travel Highlights from 2014
2014 was a great year for me travel-wise. I made it home to France not once, but twice. I made the most out of a few work trips in New York, Chicago, Raleigh, Boca Raton and Austin, Texas. I even tested out Icelandair's "the best part of a trip to Paris is Iceland" advertisement by doing a stop-over in Reyjkavik on my way back from Paris. The highlight of last year, though, was traveling to Brazil to cheer on my beloved Bleus during the World Cup, a trip I had been planning for and looking forward to for the past 3 years. MAKING THE MOST OUT OF WORK TRIPS Chicago (and New York before that) happened in the dead of winter. For Chicago, I think I got to go because none of my colleagues were ...
