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.
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Best Western,
France,
hotels,
Notre Dame de Lorette,
paris,
tourist
Pan-seared chicken, asparagus, and spinach raviolis
Recently, I had dinner with two wonderful friends at a renowned restaurant called Casa Olympe in Paris, where celibrities are frequently spotted. Reservations are tough unless you know one of the regulars who can get you in. This eatery isn’t much to look at from the outside, but its chef, the famous Olympe, has built her golden reputation on it since 1973 with her esoteric dishes made from out of the ordinary ingredients. Trusting that I can’t go wrong no matter what, I ordered pigmented squid on a bed of vermicelli. And when the waiter deposited the plate of food in front of me, I could swear that for a moment my stomach went cold.
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Casa Olympe,
paris
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.
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fashion,
France,
museum of decorative arts,
paris,
vionnet
