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the villages of the drôme provençale
this summer heat has got me thinking about one year ago on our holiday in provence. i wrote a little bit about the stay at our cottage in the drôme region and a day in arles, but nothing much about the many, many provençal villages we visited. the most known area of provence is perhaps the luberon, thanks to the popularity of a year in provence by peter mayle (a book which i highly, highly recommend if you’re going to provence at all), but we ended up staying in the northern drôme (southeastern france about halfway between marseilles and lyon) which was even more beautiful than i ever could have imagined. every day we would…
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postcards from arles
bonjour… from the czech republic. i wanted to share with you a little more of our recent trip to provence, and then i realized that i had so many photos of arles in particular. this picturesque city really seemed to merit a post itself. we started our trip by renting a car* at the marseille provence airport and heading straight to arles. i had originally hoped to see a handful of little towns on the way up north to our cottage in the drôme but arles turned out to be enough as it was. this lovely and very historical city (a great stop if you are into roman ruins sites in southern…
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provencal vacation + our cottage
why, hello there. i think this is the longest i’ve gone without a post in the six year history of this blog. that’s owing to a culmination of a very busy june calendar, finishing the end of the school year and the fêtes that go along with it + visa stuff + a long-planned ten day vacation to provence! believe it or not, i was on the computer, only ten minutes until we had to go trying to get a post out, but it would’ve been all rushed and harried and no one wants that. plus, we didn’t bring any computers with us! so there you go. i know i…
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how to enjoy versailles like royalty
i’m not a palace person. i’d much rather see how the peasantry or the middle-class live. real stuff, not rich peoples’ houses. but after urging from my friend monica (you need to go!) i figured on this, my third time in paris, i was ready to see the grandiose palaces of versailles. i decided to watch sofia coppola’s marie antoinette, which i had been meaning to see forever, and i fell in love. it quickly moved up the ranks to one of my favorite films that i know i can watch again and again. initially, the movie was panned for having too many costumes and not enough substance, but i…
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sublime paris + my airbnb open experience
on my fourth full day in paris, it was my mother’s birthday, so we had to go shopping in the opera district to spend two hours in the monki store and to stop by galeries lafayette to see their stunningly beautiful noel tree centerpiece. “i’ve spent four days here and still haven’t seen the eiffel tower yet!”, she told me, as we were riding the escalator to the terrace on the top floor level. “well….. look, there it is!” we didn’t have pre-sale tickets for the eiffel tower that afternoon (hot tip: buy your eiffel tower tickets as far in advance as you can! not a couple weeks, even in the off-season) but i…
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moments in paris, pt. I
the past week has not been an easy one. coming home from a dream holiday is always tough, but tougher has been coming to terms with the events of last week. however, now that the shock has started to subside, i have found solace in focusing on all of the wonderful parts of spending a glorious, warm november week in paris. #parisisaboutlife, after all, and you would be hard-pressed to find another city that is as vibrant as the city of light. i took a trip with my mother to celebrate her milestone birthday in a place she has always wanted to visit, but as i arrived first, i had…
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paris in the autumn
late october and the leaves are all yellow and orange… that sweet smell of fall is in the air… it really gets me reminiscing about how incredible it was to spend two weeks in paris this time of year two years ago. there was no agenda besides perusing the markets, snacking on brightly-colored macarons while people watching on boulevard st. germain, and maybe strolling through a famous garden or two. i may be closer to prague, but today i’m thinking about the other equally as historic and beautiful capital and i’m quite lucky to have sara on the blog today, an american transplant to paris who traded her new jersey bagels…
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twenty-first century paris (an itinerary)
in october and november 2012 on my way to prague, i made a two week pit-stop in paris between london and berlin. before this i had spent only a few days there eight years before, so i was thrilled to experience the city for an extended amount of days, this time with alex who had never been to france. now, inspired by reading the paris wife, i wanted to share about my fourteen day parisian experience and what my itinerary looked like. i sublet a tiny studio apartment in the 13th arrondissement while the resident (a russian artist) was on a holiday in the states. her rent was about the…
