I Prefer Paris

Paris Pooches

I know I will get an argument by dog lovers from other places, but I say no one loves their dogs more than Parisians. I back up my statement with the fact that dogs are allowed almost anywhere in Paris- at the butcher, the baker, restaurants, the metro, parks, art galleries, food shops, boutiques, and dog grooming salons. Want immediate attention and better service in a restaurant or cafe? Just park your dog on the chair next to you and watch the waiters fawn all over it and bring a water bowl tout de suite.

This is the first of a new series called Paris Pooches. Woof!

Tom Jones & Nina Simone

Janet, who resides during the day at a trendy home shop in the Marais

I love how the color of this dog matches the trousers of its owner and also the red gravel

Lion or dog?

Coming soon: Eye Prefer New York Tours

New! Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes
I am happy to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes. Come take an ethnic culinary journey with me and chef and caterer Charlotte Puckette, co-author of the bestseller The Ethnic Paris Cookbook (with Olivia Kiang-Snaije). First we will shop at a Paris green-market for the freshest ingredients and then return to Charlotte’s professional kitchen near the Eiffel Tower to cook a three-course lunch. After, we will indulge in the delicious feast we prepared along with hand-selected wines.

Cost: 185 euros per person (about $240)
Time: 9:30AM- 2PM (approximately 4 1/2 hours)
Location: We will meet by a metro station close to the market
Class days: Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
Minimum of 2 students, maximum 6 students.

Click here to sign up for the next class or for more info.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

Tours cost 195 euros for up to 3 people, and 65 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Trouville Week Part 4: Savignac Posters

I adore these whimsical posters lining the boardwalk on the beach and around town by artist and graphic designer Raymond Savignac. Savignac was born in Paris in 1907 and died in 2002 at the ripe old age of 94, spending his last years in his beloved Trouville. The Montebello Museum has a permanent display of his work with posters depicting Trouville and most of them have the signature Savignac seagull in them. He also designed over 600 advertising posters mostly in post WWII France creating iconic images for products like Monsavon soap, Gitanes cigarettes, SNCF railways, Bic razors, Air France and Citroën cars. Savignac was made an officer of the Legion d'honneur.

Did you enjoy Trouville week?

 

Not sure this is a Savignac

Coming soon: Eye Prefer New York Tours

New! Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes
I am happy to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes. Come take an ethnic culinary journey with me and chef and caterer Charlotte Puckette, co-author of the bestseller The Ethnic Paris Cookbook (with Olivia Kiang-Snaije). First we will shop at a Paris green-market for the freshest ingredients and then return to Charlotte’s professional kitchen near the Eiffel Tower to cook a three-course lunch. After, we will indulge in the delicious feast we prepared along with hand-selected wines.

Cost: 185 euros per person (about $240)
Time: 9:30AM- 2PM (approximately 4 1/2 hours)
Location: We will meet by a metro station close to the market
Class days: Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
Minimum of 2 students, maximum 6 students.

Click here to sign up for the next class or for more info.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

Tours cost 195 euros for up to 3 people, and 65 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Trouville Part 3: Oceanfront Chateaux

I fantasized about whiling away the summer sipping ice coffee and eating French pastries on the terrace of one of the beachfront chateaux below. Anybody want to join me?(and foot the bill and take over doing my tours ?).

Here is the last piece of juicy Trouville gossip from Lynn about some of the famous inhabitants of these villas:

Trouville didn't just attract artists; writers like Proust and Flaubert and Marguerite Duras loved the place, as I do. 

In the 1850s Trouville became known as the “Queen of beaches” when sun bathing suddenly emerged as a fad and a train track was built connecting Paris to Trouville. Proust came in 1891, at 21, and then in the summers of 1893 and 1894 with his mother. They stayed at the Roches Noires, apartment 110.



              Roches Noires

In 1963, Margeurite Duras bought the apartment you see here on the first floor, corner left. It looked directly out on the Channel, beyond the boardwalk, a view which  Duras called “the greatest tracking shot in France.”

A half block north of Les Roches Noires is the Villa Persane, another place where Proust stayed one summer and which he loved. It was here, watching the beach and the grand parade of sun worshippers, he conceived much of Les Jeunes Filles en Fleurs.

The villa was just behind the exotic Tour Malakoff, a tower that Proust wanted to rent in 1906.

  And Eros played on the beach. The young Gustave Flaubert fell in love in 1836, walking behind a beautiful married woman, Elisa Schlesinger, gallantly picking up her cape which had fallen on to the sand.

All these gossipy facts are surely reason enough, I think, to visit Trouville.  But, really, I come just because I love it and have from the very instant I saw it. Maybe because it is so much like the Oregon coast where I grew up (without the elegant French villas or a formal boardwalk or a casino, of course). I don't know for sure, but I think you'll find Trouville as fascinating and relaxing as I do.  Anyway, give it a try. And have a Dame Blanche in the casino restaurant. It will make your day, even if you don't win.

Lynn Jeffress is the author of the recent book of short stories The Dali Code & Other Paris Stories to order) and this summer will release a book of poems, Announcements, through Wild Ocean Press.

 

 

The next 3 photos are of a medieval castle in the center of the city that is a departure from the mostly Norman architecture.

Coming soon: Eye Prefer New York Tours

New! Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes
I am happy to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes. Come take an ethnic culinary journey with me and chef and caterer Charlotte Puckette, co-author of the bestseller The Ethnic Paris Cookbook (with Olivia Kiang-Snaije). First we will shop at a Paris green-market for the freshest ingredients and then return to Charlotte’s professional kitchen near the Eiffel Tower to cook a three-course lunch. After, we will indulge in the delicious feast we prepared along with hand-selected wines.

Cost: 185 euros per person (about $240)
Time: 9:30AM- 2PM (approximately 4 1/2 hours)
Location: We will meet by a metro station close to the market
Class days: Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
Minimum of 2 students, maximum 6 students.

Click here to sign up for the next class or for more info.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

Tours cost 195 euros for up to 3 people, and 65 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Trouville Week Part 2: The Town

More than anything, I love the colors of the buildings,the doors, and the shutters in Trouville. It was the beginning of spring and it seemed like everyone was doing some kind of spring cleaning and preparation for the onslaught of summer visitors- gardeners were trimming hedges, house painters were brushing fresh coats of paint on the winter worn buildings, and the sound of electric saws, vacuum cleaners, and rug cleaners shattered the mostly silent village.

Here is more on Trouville from Lynn.

Normandy is birthplace of the Impressionist movement, where a first-time ever Impressionist Festival is being held this summer and which includes impressionist paintings from all over the world. They can be seen in various museums throughout Normandy until September 15th. In Trouville, you will find the Montebello Museum where,  as part of the Impressionist Festival, you'll discover the photography of a farmer named Fernand Bigno, an important figure in the French "pictorialist" movement, who is represented by a series of forty single edition photos dating from 1914 onwards, based on the themes and compositions of Impressionist landscapes.

There's a casino in Trouville (now owned by Barriere), built in 1850, long before the casino in Deauville was built,  and one of the grand subjects of impressionists like Boudin, the grandfather of impressionist painters, who invited his friends Monet and Pissarro and Degas to come visit him and paint. They did. They came. They painted.

Lynn Jeffress is the author of the recent book of short stories The Dali Code & Other Paris Stories to order) and this summer will release a book of poems, Announcements, through Wild Ocean Press.

 

Coming soon: Eye Prefer New York Tours

New! Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes
I am happy to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes. Come take an ethnic culinary journey with me and chef and caterer Charlotte Puckette, co-author of the bestseller The Ethnic Paris Cookbook (with Olivia Kiang-Snaije). First we will shop at a Paris green-market for the freshest ingredients and then return to Charlotte’s professional kitchen near the Eiffel Tower to cook a three-course lunch. After, we will indulge in the delicious feast we prepared along with hand-selected wines.

Cost: 185 euros per person (about $240)
Time: 9:30AM- 2PM (approximately 4 1/2 hours)
Location: We will meet by a metro station close to the market
Class days: Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
Minimum of 2 students, maximum 6 students.

Click here to sign up for the next class or for more info.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

Tours cost 195 euros for up to 3 people, and 65 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Trouville Week Part 1: The Fish Market

Lynn generously invited me to stay with her at a bed & breakfast in the seaside village of Trouville in Normandy in the end of March. It was nice to chill out in this charming, calming village and the rush of breathing in the salty, clean air felt great. One of the first things that struck my eye and my sense of smell was the fish market with the freshest mussels, oysters, lobsters, coquilles St. Jacques, sole,langoustines, and snails you ever saw. I liked the way the merchants took such pride in the presentation and the quality of their fish. The deep colors and rich textures were extraordinary and I couldn't stop photographing them. Good thing I wasn't on the seafood diet- every time I sea/see food...

Below those photos are some fun surprises.

Lynn contributed the following story about the fish market.

When you arrive at the Trouville-Deauville station you take a right and walk over the Touques River then left along the quay to the poissonnerie, a famous fish market built in the Norman style. In 1934, mayor Fernand Moureaux, (Yah for Monsieur Moureaux!) desiring to emphasize the traditional character of Trouville, as opposed to Deauville's grand chic hired local architect Maurice Vincent in 1936 to build a modern building inspired by the Lieutenance house and the porch of Saint Catherine's church of Honfleur. Due to its significance as an example of 20th-century Norman architecture, it was placed on the Protected Heritage list by the French Institute of Architecture in 1992. The building caught fire in 2006 and is currently being rebuilt exactly as it was before. It is almost complete. In the meantime, the fishermen sell fish of all kinds along the quay.

Fish Market before the fire

Lynn Jeffress is the author of the recent book of short stories The Dali Code & Other Paris Stories to order) and this summer will release a book of poems, Announcements, through Wild Ocean Press.

Do I look pretty in that purple hat?

Lynn the sailor

Coming soon: Eye Prefer New York Tours

New! Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes
I am happy to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes. Come take an ethnic culinary journey with me and chef and caterer Charlotte Puckette, co-author of the bestseller The Ethnic Paris Cookbook (with Olivia Kiang-Snaije). First we will shop at a Paris green-market for the freshest ingredients and then return to Charlotte’s professional kitchen near the Eiffel Tower to cook a three-course lunch. After, we will indulge in the delicious feast we prepared along with hand-selected wines.

Cost: 185 euros per person (about $240)
Time: 9:30AM- 2PM (approximately 4 1/2 hours)
Location: We will meet by a metro station close to the market
Class days: Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
Minimum of 2 students, maximum 6 students.

Click here to sign up for the next class or for more info.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

Tours cost 195 euros for up to 3 people, and 65 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Metro Posters 4

Here is a fresh series of recent metro and street posters.

Sensual ad series for Schweppes

I LOVE this poster for the new Juliet Binoche film, Copie Conforme, for which she won the best actress award at the Cannes film festival last week

These are from a clever ad campaign for Leroy Merlin, a home decorating store similar to Home Depot. Translation: I'm dressing my home.

A new video game. Very Clint Eastwood/60s spaghetti western. Go ahead, make my jour!

As you well know, I can't resist any posters with a baby in them

Coming soon: Eye Prefer New York Tours

New! Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes
I am happy to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes. Come take an ethnic culinary journey with me and chef and caterer Charlotte Puckette, co-author of the bestseller The Ethnic Paris Cookbook (with Olivia Kiang-Snaije). First we will shop at a Paris green-market for the freshest ingredients and then return to Charlotte’s professional kitchen near the Eiffel Tower to cook a three-course lunch. After, we will indulge in the delicious feast we prepared along with hand-selected wines.

Cost: 185 euros per person (about $240)
Time: 9:30AM- 2PM (approximately 4 1/2 hours)
Location: We will meet by a metro station close to the market
Class days: Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
Minimum of 2 students, maximum 6 students.

Click here to sign up for the next class or for more info.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

Tours cost 195 euros for up to 3 people, and 65 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Brigitte Bardot Bag for Lancel

Splashed all over the windows of the Lancel store on the Champs Elysees are photos of Brigitte Bardot, former french sex symbol turned bitter animal rights activist and hideous racist. I noticed these fab black and white photos while I was at Nature Capitale last Sunday.

Lancel is launching a new eco-friendly/green bag made of 100% natural fibers called the Bardot, and Brigitte participated in the design and execution of it.

Brigitte is a staunch animal rights activist with her own foundation, and has made controversial statements in the past years that have made PETA look like paltry amateurs. She once had a neighbor's donkey castrated while looking after it, on the grounds of its "sexual harassment" of her own donkey and mare, for which she was taken to court by the donkey's owner in 1989. According to Wikipedia, during the 1990s she became outspoken due to her criticism of immigration, race-mixing, some aspects of homosexuality and Islam in France, and has been fined five times for "inciting racial hatred". One of her infamous quotes:  "...my country, France, my homeland, my land is again invaded by an overpopulation of foreigners, especially Muslims". About modern gays as compared to her older gay friends, she says "they jiggle their bottoms, put their little fingers in the air and with their little castrato voices moan about what those ghastly heteros put them through".

Click here to enter a contest to win a Bardot bag. Just make sure you are white, straight, and not wearing a fur if you win, otherwise she will take it back from you.

Coming soon: Eye Prefer New York Tours

New! Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes
I am happy to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes. Come take an ethnic culinary journey with me and chef and caterer Charlotte Puckette, co-author of the bestseller The Ethnic Paris Cookbook (with Olivia Kiang-Snaije). First we will shop at a Paris green-market for the freshest ingredients and then return to Charlotte’s professional kitchen near the Eiffel Tower to cook a three-course lunch. After, we will indulge in the delicious feast we prepared along with hand-selected wines.

Cost: 185 euros per person (about $240)
Time: 9:30AM- 2PM (approximately 4 1/2 hours)
Location: We will meet by a metro station close to the market
Class days: Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
Minimum of 2 students, maximum 6 students.

Click here to sign up for the next class or for more info.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

Tours cost 195 euros for up to 3 people, and 65 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

June Eye Need to Do's: Maison du Chocolat, How to Become a Parisian in One-Hour, Nora Jones, and Histoire Idéale de la Mode Contemporaine vol. I : 70-80

How to Become a Parisian in One-Hour
I saw this smash-hit one man show last month and it was hilarious but so true. The Gumby faced Olivier Giraud rants about the peculiar behavior of the French while demonstrating at the same time how to be just like them in shops, on the metro, in a taxi, and even in the boudoir. Don't miss this fresh and funny take on infamous Parisians.

Tuesday and Wednesday 8:30PM, Saturday 7PM
Theatre de la Main d'Or
15 passage de la Main d'Or, 11th arr.
Metro:Ledru Rollin
For discounted 12 euro tickets

http://www.billetreduc.com/spectacle-olivier-giraud.htm

 Here are two back to back events that will make chocoholics swoon. 

Nuit de Gateau
Nuit de Gateau at Maison Chocolat is chocolate dream come true: a delicious evening devoted to sampling chocolate tarts, pastries, macarons and more, free of charge from head pastry chef Gilles Marchal. I'll be there for sure, so don't get in my way or else I'll deck you.

Thursday, June 3, 7PM to 12AM
La Maison du Chocolat
8 Blvd. de Madeleine, 9th arr.
Metro: Madeleine
http://www.lamaisonduchocolat.com/en/actualite.php

  
Christophe Roussel
I wrote about Christophe Roussel's divine chocolate shop for Sweet Week in February. He is giving a half-day class and tasting of his yumalicious chocolates and macarons. 

Saturday, June 5, 2PM-5PM
Hotel Cadran
10 rue du Champs de Mars, 7th arr.
Metro: Ecole Militaire
25 euros per person
Call +33.(0)1.40.62.67.00 to reserve 

Histoire Idéale de la Mode Contemporaine vol. I : 70-80 
A trip down memory lane of the great fashion era of the 70s and 80s , Histoire Idéale de la Mode Contemporaine vol. I : 70-80 is a retrospective of the cutting edge fashion that has much influenced fashion even today. With over 120 shows represented in photographs and videos, see how designers Cacharel, Kenzo, Jean Paul Galutier, Dorothée Bis, Sonia Rykiel, Karl Lagerfeld for Chloé ,Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçon, the kings of shoulder outrageous shoulder pads Thierry Mugler and Claude Montana, and the greatest of them all Yves St. Laurent, first made their indelible marks on fashion.

Till October 10
Musee des Arts Decoratifs
107 rue de Rivoli, 1st. arr
Metro: Palais Royal- Musee de Louvre
http://www.lesartsdecoratifs.fr/english-439/  

 
Norah Jones
Groove to the undefinable sound of the unique Norah Jones as she sings selections from her new CD The Fall and past hits.

June 24 & 25
L'Olympia
28 Blvd. de Capucines, 9th arr.
Metro: Opera
Tickets

Coming soon: Eye Prefer New York Tours

New! Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes
I am happy to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes. Come take an ethnic culinary journey with me and chef and caterer Charlotte Puckette, co-author of the bestseller The Ethnic Paris Cookbook (with Olivia Kiang-Snaije). First we will shop at a Paris green-market for the freshest ingredients and then return to Charlotte’s professional kitchen near the Eiffel Tower to cook a three-course lunch. After, we will indulge in the delicious feast we prepared along with hand-selected wines.

Cost: 185 euros per person (about $240)
Time: 9:30AM- 2PM (approximately 4 1/2 hours)
Location: We will meet by a metro station close to the market
Class days: Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
Minimum of 2 students, maximum 6 students.

Click here to sign up for the next class or for more info.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

Tours cost 195 euros for up to 3 people, and 65 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com