What are the main themes to share, after traveling for a year around the world and visiting 32 countries? The most obvious point is that travel is one of life’s most important and pleasurable activities. This year we experienced and shared amazing sights, delicious tastes, new stories, the growth and broadening of our perspectives in […]
Camryn (my age), Maggie (6), Jill (Mom) and Chris (Dad) Woods made our last days in Paris awesome. The parents chatted about endless super boring stuff while the kids played tons of games. The Woods were spending their summer in London and took a two hour train to meet us. We both stayed on the […]
We had walked by the Chanel windows a hundred times. The boutique was right next door. Katherine and I often paused to admire the beautiful and occasionally outrageous outfits. Then one day in early December, we saw something which took our breath away: there amidst the winter white ensembles and holiday decorations were scores of […]
How to celebrate Christmas on the road? It was a question Russ and I hadn’t really considered when we started planning this trip but it loomed large as the end of December approached. We had initially planned to spend the holidays in Vienna in order to explore the famous Christmas markets. However, due to visa […]
When the day finally arrived to leave Paris, we dried our tears and left home four hours early for the train station. We knew there would be some sort of weather delay because heavy snows had already cancelled most of the Eurostar trains from Paris to London the day before. We stumbled out of the […]
This weekend my cousin Zoe came to visit! Zoe is a junior at Brown with strong interests in genetics, medicine and anthropology and she can tell you a lot about old bones and also Narwhals. We were especially happy to see family around the holidays and she was excited to visit Paris for the first […]
This week we took an overnight trip to Strasbourg which is the capital of Alsace, the eastern-most region of France. Alsace straddles the border between France and Germany and throughout history has ping-ponged between the two. It officially rejoined France as recently as 1918 but maintains a Germanic feel and flavor. The joint cultural heritage of […]
The streets of Paris are its heart. Parisian rents are high and apartments are small. Rather than sit inside, Parisians head out to the cafe to see friends. A glass of wine costs $5-7 but it can be nursed for hours. Since this is expected, no waiter will demur. In the true spirit of egalite […]
The following are short posts and pictures about different activities we did with the Kahns. The Kahns are our friends from Lexington MA and they came for one week to visit us in Paris. We’ve been friends with the Kahns since my Mom and Dad were in college. They have two children, Sophie and Rachel. […]
The Kahns were visiting and it was time for some cultural immersion. We were going on a fashion tour along with our friend Nathalie, and our first stop: Chanel. Our tour guide in front, we walked to Chanel (down 6 doors from our apartment), stopped in front of the windows, and listened to Sophie our […]
Le Grand Vefour has been around for a very long time. It was the first restaurant in Europe to be open to the public with a menu. So with our friends Rachel, Sophie, Sandy, and Grant, we went there for lunch. Guy Martin, the head chef, met us at the door. We greeted him then […]
We wanted a genuine cultural immersion in one of Europe’s greatest cities. That’s why we decided to rent an apartment in Paris versus stay in a hotel. We’d make the beds, run the errands, and do all the cooking and cleaning. Everything would surely be more fun in French. While this has largely been true, […]
Have you ever wished you could go back to college… and this time actually study? With a couple of months of free time in Paris and the benefit of hindsight, I wanted to take a class and enjoy being a student again. I signed up for a semester-long course at the Sorbonne called the Cours […]
It was late September and we were skyping with our dear friends the Ramsey-Troughtons when all of a sudden Karen asked “Hey, what are you guys doing for the Columbus Day weekend?” I told her that we had no firm plans and she instantly replied “We’re coming!” Sure enough, two weeks later Karen, Colin, and […]
My family recently participated in an atelier at the Louvre. An atelier is a workshop and almost every museum in Paris offers them. This one was about photography. When we arrived we waited with some other families until the photographer got there. She told us what was going to happen in French, of which I […]
Who needs the elevator? Not Carter! Not Mrs. Altchek! And not me! The result was unanimous, to the top of the Eiffel tower without it. When we got to the first step, I was shaking. I’m not a big fan of heights…but there was sure to be fun at the top. Mrs.A started going up […]
Tennis was one of the things I knew I would really miss while traveling this year. And not just for the exercise. There’s not much better than giggling with my partner Devon as we flub drills at practice, the gentle ribbing of our coach Magnus as he tries to get us to focus, and the […]
Our last stop in the Loire Valley was the massive Château Chambord. The building was commissioned in 1519 by a 25-year-old King Francois I. The stated reason was that he loved to hunt and he dreamed of having a hunting lodge so princely that nobles would flock there to hunt in royal style. In French class we learned […]
We have seen a lot of castles on this journey. Whether built for battle or governance, very few have struck me as a place to live. They tend to be massive structures with imposing facades that dominate the landscape. The scales are generally so vast and the interiors so cold that despite the tapestries and […]
“I have wasted my hours” is a famous Leonardo da Vinci quote. We did not want to do that, so we decided to take a road trip. We went to four main places, one for each of us to blog about. And I am blogging about Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo da Vinci has an amazing mansion. King […]
Can you guess what noble castle Piggy is dining in tonight? Remember everyone wants a chance to guess, so email your answer straight to me at katherine@365saturdays.org
My family recently went to Mont Saint Michel. My parents had always wanted to take us and we were all excited. As we neared Mont Saint Michel, we saw that the only way to get on the island was a long strip of land, very narrow, and pretty high. As we drove on to the […]
The family (including piggy of course) had a wonderful long weekend. We went to two main places and this is one of them. Can you guess where Piggy visited over the weekend? (Pssst… it is not always completely connected to land!) Remember everyone wants to guess so don’t just post your answer – email it straight […]
When we got there the line was extraordinarily long. We were at the Salon Du Chocolat, which in English means the festival of chocolate. Everyone got there at the same time, after lunch. After waiting for about a half an hour, we got inside and what we found was a chocolate trade-show. It was a […]
Here are brief descriptions and photos from other activities in Paris this October: – Playing in the Tuileries. Paris has turned to autumn colors, and the leaves are down in the nearby Tuileries park. One day the factors all aligned and the whole family had a few free hours at mid-day with no tours and no […]
A few days ago we went to La Tour d’Argent, or the “Tower of Silver.” We entered the tower and were greeted by a woman in a black dress and a man in a suit. The woman took our coats and the man ushered us in to a fancily decorated waiting room. We sat on […]
Intent upon maximizing our culinary explorations in Paris, despite the great risk to our waistlines, we have now had the good fortune to have dined at three of the city’s most famous restaurants: Taillevent, Le Grand Vefour, and La Tour d’Argent. An amateur’s review and report seems to be in order. This time, however, I […]
So far we have been to three different cooking classes, Macaroons, Cookies and lemon cake, and Chouquettes. Macaroons: We went with our friends Colin, Matthew, and their mom Karen, to an English cooking class. Dad had class but he assured us he would be there for the eating part. There were four other people and […]
Cooking in Paris has been hard because there are so many fabulous restaurants to tempt us that we often eat out. However, we sometimes visit the weekly outdoor markets and become inspired. As Russ’s photos will attest, the stalls there are laden with every tasty thing you can imagine: pyramids of colorful vegetables which seem […]
One day when Linda and Hugh were visiting we chanced upon Madame Grevin’s Wax Museum. Grevin was the original master who taught Madame Tussaud – a relative who some say stole the technique and escaped with it to London. Inside there are numerous sculptures, eerily lifelike. Each of us took a photo with someone famous. Stumbling […]
My sister and I have French lessons 3-4 times a week, with our awesome teacher Blandine. Our lessons are each 1 ½ hours long, and great fun! Back in your childhood, or maybe more recently, you may have heard that the French Teachers were strict, proper, had the ability to hit students with a ruler, […]
Naomi had taken us to the L’Orangerie museum a few weeks ago. Today we were going to use the knowledge she imbued upon us and transfer that knowledge to my mother. We arrived at the L’Orangerie and decided to go for the most famous exhibits first: Monet’s “Water Lillies” collection. Monet had painted the set […]
We went to The Rodin museum a couple days ago with our friends Colin and Matthew. We didn’t go in the museum, but the gardens. When we got there we saw The Thinker, deep in thought as always, The Gates to Hell, and many other famous sculptures. But that wasn’t the highlight. When we finished […]
Last night, we had one of our most memorable meals yet. As a birthday surprise, Russ made dinner reservations and arranged for Naomi to come and stay with the kids. We were off to Taillevent, a Michelin-starred restaurant which has been called a “veritable temple to haute cuisine” and a venerable Parisian institution of fine […]
We have now completed six weeks in Paris. Any notion of sitting quietly at cafés has been dispelled by the sheer magnitude and opportunity of arriving at the city, hosting visitors, setting up an apartment and enrolling family members in various activities. This is the absolute best place on our year-long itinerary for friends and […]
Using a US cellphone in foreign countries is prohibitively expensive. For this reason we brought an unlocked GSM cellphone. We planned to buy prepaid SIM cards in each country where we would stay for a long time. We also brought a SIM card from GymSIM that offers discounted international calling around the world, so we could use that for the shorter […]
While Linda and Hugh were visiting us we had a chance to take the tour of the Paris Opera house. This was far more interesting than we had expected. This is the opera house that was the inspiration for Phantom of the Opera. There really is an underground lake, which is a water reservoir in […]
Last night Paris celebrated Nuit Blanche. This is a single night when everyone is encouraged to pull an all-nighter to show support for the arts community. You have deep conversations with friends, visit art installations, party, drink loads of espresso, and generally celebrate the fact that you are young, alive and in Paris. (We decided […]
Yesterday, we spent the morning exploring the source of two of our favorite French foods: baguettes and chocolate. On a guided visit led by Leontine, a colleague of Antoinette’s, we went behind the scenes to learn exactly where baguettes come from. We were joined by my mom and stepdad and their good friends the Neufelds, […]
We went to Euro Disney for my tenth birthday! It was officially decided a few days ago, and now it is over, it seemed to fly by. When we arrived the first thing we did (after an instruction from the ticket booth lady) was go to the “town hall”. When we arrived my mom told […]
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