Red, green or Christmas? In New Mexico, Christmas is more than a holiday. It's a food preference, local parlance for mixing red and green chile sauce on your enchilada or burrito. Chile is a cornerstone of the New Mexican economy and of its cuisine, so much that the state is the only one in the country with an official question ("red or green?"). Earlier this year, I met up with my parents in New Mexico during the annual Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, which falls right after the chile harvest. By then, chiles are all red, strung together in colourful ristras drying in the hot New Mexican air. Chile harvest happens in the late summer and the fruits are strung together and hung outside ...
Travel
8 Ways Washington, D.C. Rocks the Holidays
Washington does Christmas pretty well! Here are some of the holiday displays I look forward to year after year. CHRISTMAS WREATHS AT UNION STATION In addition to the three large wreaths hanging in the three main archways in front of Union Station, there's other decorations including a giant Model Train exhibit inside in the West Hall and a 32 feet tall Christmas tree outside, both courtesy of the Norwegian embassy. In 2013, the tree was decked out with 700 shining replicas of Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream. In 2014, the tree made a statement on the environment and was decorated with polar bears. I can't wait to see what the Norwegian embassy comes up with this year! (<-- ...
Celebrating 25 Years of German Unity at the German Embassy
I don't venture out to Reservoir Road very often, and when I do I rarely make it past 4101. Tonight was different as I made it all the way to 4645 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Germany's reunification at the German Embassy in the United States. This event is one of the biggest celebration that the embassy hosts every year, the equivalent of France’s July 14th party with thousands of expats, special guests, German businesses or business partners and dignitaries attending. And, you know, random Frenchies like me ;-) Typically, it’s held closer to the actual Day of Unity, on October 3rd, though it was moved to October 1st last year out of respect for the Yom Kippur holiday and was ...
Postcard from Philadelphia: 13th & Locust’s Rainbow Crosswalk
It was the day after the Supreme Court's landmark ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide in the U.S. My parents and I were in Philadelphia to catch the Hermione tall ship while she was making her way up the East Coast. We were wandering around the city's Mural Mile, a 2.5 mile loop through downtown, to catch some of Philadelphia's most iconic street art. Suddenly, a pop of colour on the ground caught our attention for a change. At the intersection of 13th street and Locust, rainbow stripes had been painted on the pedestrian crosswalks, forming a bright and bold square. Turns out, this didn't just pop overnight following the Supreme Court decision. It had been planned long ...
Postcard from the Twin Cities: Peanuts Statues in Rice Park
I probably own one of the world's most traveled Snoopy. First, he made his way from China to France in my mother's suitcase. Then, I dragged him on all my trips as a kid, from Greece to Senegal... he even got to head back to China and see the great wall ;-) Many years later, as I visited Minneapolis-Saint Paul for the 2008 Republican National Convention I was stoked to be welcomed into the city by these two statues of my childhood bestie and travel buddy at the airport: These Snoopies, I learned, were part of Peanuts On Parade, a tribute to Minneapolis native Charles M. Schulz, that ran shortly after his death in 2000. 101 5-foot tall fiberglass statues of Snoopy were created, sponsored ...
Postcard from Wisconsin: Babcock Hall Dairy Store
Did your alma mater produce its own amazing ice cream on campus? I'm gonna guess no, unless you went to UConn, Penn State or the University of Wisconsin at Madison. One of my best friends, Cecile of The Worldly Bite, comes from a long line of Badgers, so ahead of my recent trip to Wisconsin, she gave me the scoop on everything I couldn't miss while visiting her campus, starting with getting a scoop of delicious ice cream at Babcock Hall Dairy Store, bien sur. Wisconsin is known as America's dairyland so it's not that surprising that UW-Madison would offer the best Dairy Science major in the country, host the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research (CDR), and operate its own dairy plant on ...
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 ...
Pick Your Own Tulips at Burnside Farms
Tulips are a beautiful symbol of spring. In Washington, tulips typically bloom right after the cherry blossoms have come and gone, but they were a little late this year, probably because we've had such a cold spring. Over the past 2 weeks though, their vibrant colours have been on full display across the city. And just outside of the District, a quick 45 minutes drive away, a farm in Haymarket, Virginia, plays host to one of largest pick-your-own tulips festival in the United States. Nicknamed "Holland in Haymarket," the festival typically runs late April to mid-May, depending on when the flowers actually bloom. Visitors pay an entrance fee of $3.00, and then there's a cost per stem ...
Postcard from France: Marseille
Last Christmas, my uncle invited us to spend the holidays at his house in Goult, a lovely village in the Luberon, located halfway between Aix-en-Provence and Avignon. My uncle is my mother's brother and they both grew up in Marseille, France's second largest city. Rather than take the train to Avignon and get picked up by my uncle there, we decided to spend a day and a half in Marseille and rent a car to drive to Goult. I have very little childhood memories of Marseille, and my husband had never been so I was excited to discover the city, especially with my favourite Marseillaise - my mom - as our guide! FIRST THINGS FIRST: LUNCH AT CHEZ ETIENNE The trip from Paris Gare-de-Lyon ...
April in Paris Washington
April in Paris may be a feeling that no one can ever reprise but if you were in Washington this past weekend you probably met the charm of spring directly in the face too. Paris may have "chestnuts in blossoms" but we've got stunning cherry trees given as a sign of friendship by Tokyo Mayor Yukio Ozaki back in 1912. I don't know if I was starved for spring after a long winter that kept dragging on... or if I was lured to the Tidal Basin by an unlikely combination of peak bloom time coinciding with a weekend which also happened to be an absolutely stunning spring day, but I definitely caught cherry blossoms fever over these last 2 days! Here are a few pictures I snapped during sakura on ...
