This past Valentine’s day weekend, when my friends Judith from Chicago and Daphne from New York made a quick jaunt to Paris, we decided to have a girls’ night out. To be near them, I booked a hotel room in downtown Paris. I just wanted a place to bunk for the night and the Best Western at Notre-Dame de Lorette offered a convenient place as well the required standards of a well-known chain.
One thing that makes or breaks a trip, along with your budget, is the price of a hotel room. In Paris, a decent hotel room in a central location can cost between 150 to 300 Euros (US $200-$460). My single room at the BW Lorette amounted to a modest 98 Euros (US $130) for one night.
Click here.
Tagged as:
Best Western,
France,
hotels,
Notre Dame de Lorette,
paris,
tourist
Lineart drawing of a Vionnet design
For centuries, fashion (though some would assert gender politics) imposed the corset in women’s wear to achieve a stiff, wasp-waisted look. This controversial garment was often blamed for cancer, circulatory diseases, asthma, ugly children, and death. While these claims were never medically corroborated, it is still safe to say that corsets were not exactly women’s cozy wear of choice, to say the least.
This restrictive style of dress faded out at the turn of the 20th century, thanks mainly to an avant-garde French fashion designer named Madeleine Vionnet, who was a woman herself.
Click here.
Tagged as:
fashion,
France,
museum of decorative arts,
paris,
vionnet
What is the history of the Christmas log cake? According to Wikipedia, “A Yule log is a large wooden log which is burned in the hearth as a part of traditional Yule or Christmas celebrations in several European cultures. It can be a part of the Winter Solstice festival or the Twelve Days of Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, or Twelfth Night. The expression “Yule log” has also come to refer to log-shaped Christmas cakes, also known as “chocolate logs” or “Bûche de Noël”.
In France, the Bûche de Noël is the requisite dessert at any Christmas dinner. Each year, French pastry cooks of all levels of renown apply themselves in the creation of imaginative, original, and tasty log cakes for the season. One of these premier chef-patissiers in French history is Gaston Lenôtre.
In 1947, Lenôtre opened his first patisserie on the rue Gambetta in Paris. Bounding from one success to the next, the name Lenôtre gradually became synonymous with luxury brand pastries, and his reputation and business grew to international fame. Click here.
Tagged as:
Bûche de Noël,
Christmas log cake,
France,
Kenzo,
Lenôtre,
patisserie
