Since Saturday, we have stayed in an unusual place on the edge of the Marais, across the street from the Pompidou, a top-floor apartment where the elevator deposits you directly into the living room. The living area is a very fine space, with couches and a dining table for six. The kitchen is well-appointed and […]

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It was One of Those Days in Paris. When the sun is breaking through cottony clouds and everyone is smiling and the world is a wonderful place — or at least it is as viewed from the little park named Square Jean XXIII on the tip of the Ile de la Cite. Let’s take a […]

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It’s not exactly Everest, but it is a hike from the bottom of Butte Montmartre to the top, where the Sacre-Coeur Basilica was built. Most tourists, including this one, tend to believe Sacre-Coeur is old. Like Notre Dame. But it is not. Notre Dame was begun in 1163 and completed in 1345. Sacre-Coeur was started […]

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Sometimes we forget how much our living space says about us. Our furniture. Our appliances. The art on the walls and the knick-knacks on the tables. The size of our television. What is present, in our digs, and what is absent. And I can say, without hesitation, that our home in France this week is […]

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All the time spent in Paris … and it is hard to recall more than one day spent in the 18th arrondissement. A visit to Sacre-Coeur. A very long time ago. However, we are staying a week in the 18th this time around, and it’s not quite like the areas of Paris with which we […]

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In some ways, it was a well-planned fete. A concept years in the making. Guest list resolved. Date and time chosen months ahead. Place identified. Champ de Mars, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Near the dirt allee named Thomy-Thierry. The trouble with that?

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In 1975, during a roundtrip tour of the U.S. — from sea to shining sea (to shining sea) — my brother and I pulled into Gettysburg late one evening. We found a motel that seemed tidy and inexpensive enough, and were soon asleep in our ground-floor room. When we woke the next morning, one of […]

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A few days back I posted an entry about how I doubt I will be able to cheer for the U.S. national team at the coming World Cup, because I have developed an animus towards Jurgen Klinsmann, the coach who dumped Landon Donovan. That provoked some reaction, some of it more than a bit tart. “We don’t […]

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Clocks in Western Europe and Britain were moved ahead by an hour over the weekend — about three weeks behind the U.S. clock-tweaking. They have moved to Euro daylight savings time, and England is now three hours behind Abu Dhabi, sted the four hours during the winter, and the continent is two hours behind, sted […]

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A few of these surprised me. Starting with No. 1. Other surprises came from the cities not on the list. These are the 10 most heavily traveled routes, leaving from Abu Dhabi, per Etihad Airways, the government-owned, Abu Dhabi-based carrier — which just had a record year, as this National story notes, by number of […]

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