Paris with Hillary - A day in the life

A look into lucky Hillary's apartment, hangouts, and life in Paris.

Watch more Paris videos at tripfilms.com

Hillary is featured in a series of travelogues created by film-maker Elena Rossini at tripfilms.com

And Speaking of Paris Restaurants...Any Ideas?

I think my biggest fear about my upcoming trip to Paree is eating out alone. Did you know I'm really fairly timid? I don't want to feel uncomfortable, or obliged to pay the earth. Clotilde's Edible Adventures in Paris (of Chocolate and Zucchini fame)  was a big help here. With the her book in hand and using other sources, I compiled a list of restaurants I thought looked interesting. I know you guys love to travel. Any thoughts, ideas, opinions? Hey, I did say I like to research.

Pâtisserie Viennoise, 8 rue de l'Ecole

Tugalik, 4 Rue Toullier

Les Fontaines, 9 rue Soufflot

Le Petit Prince, 12 rue Lanneau

L’Ecurie, 2 Rue Laplace. This place still has a squat toilet!!

Crepes a Gogo, 12 rue Soufflot

Les Papilles, 30 Gay Lussac

La Fete Galantes, 17 rue Polytechnique

Casa Valentino, 208 rue St. Jacques

Perraudin, 157 Rue St. Jacques

Quartier Latin, 1 rue Mouffetard - is this the restaurant in the movie Blue with Juliette Binoche?

Le Comptoir du Pantheon, 5 rue Soufflot

Le Café de la Nouvelle Mairie, 19 Rue des Fossés Saint-Jacques

Delmas, 2 place Contrescarpe

Le Jardin D’Ivy, 75 rue Mouffetard. Sounds great

La Salle a Manger, 138 rue Mouffetard

Chez Jaafar, 22 Rue Du Sommerard. I've read bad things by locals.

Le Sorbon, 60 Rue des Ecoles

Ze Kitchen Gallerie, 4, Rue des Grands Augustin. This place may be too "rich" for me. 

Ma Salle A Manger, 26 Place Dauphine, on the Ile Saint-Louis

Le Petit Zinc, 11 Rue St Benoit - I've heard bad things.

Cocotte Jolie, 18 Rue Dauphine

La Jacobine, 9 Rue Saint André des Arts

Marinara, 46 rue Dauphine

Assanabel, 38 Rue Jacob

Les Nuits des Thes, 22 rue des Beaunes

Caffe Minotti, 33, rue de Verneuil

La Ferme St. Simon, 6, rue de St-Simon, Paris, France

L’Artisan des Saveurs, 73 rue Cherche du Midi

Bread and Roses, 7 rue Fleurus

Café Constant, 139 Rue Saint-Dominique. Sounds great but out of my way.

Cordonnerie, 14 rue Saint-Denis

Le Souffle, Rue du Mont Thabor. I think I'll make a reservation here.

Paris With Hillary - Where to Eat

Miam Miam! Hillary suggests some places to go for lunch on the Rive Droite and dishes on the best macaroons, croque monsieurs, and crepes on the Left Bank.

Watch more Paris videos at tripfilms.com

Paris with Hillary - the 18th Arrondissement

Uh-oh. Hillary shows us Montmartre, the home of Amelie Poulain. Can Crème brûlée be far behind?

Watch more Paris videos at tripfilms.com

Hillary is featured in a series of travelogues created by film-maker Elena Rossini at tripfilms.com

Paris with Hillary - the 10th Arrondissement

The Canal St. Martin is the capital of Paris's 'bo bo' - 'bourgeois boheme' - scene. Shabby Chic! Count me in!

Watch more Paris videos at tripfilms.com

Hillary is featured in a series of travelogues created by film-maker Elena Rossini at tripfilms.com

Paris with Hillary - the 5th Arrondissement

There's always something new to discover in the Latin Quarter.

Watch more Paris videos at tripfilms.com

Hillary is featured in a series of travelogues created by film-maker Elena Rossini at tripfilms.com

French Unions Plan New Pensions Strike October 12

Today a  group of six French unions said they are planning a fresh strike Oct. 12, and a day of protest Oct. 2, against government plans to overhaul the country's pensions system.

Calling for a "new day of massive strikes and protests" on Oct. 12, to coincide with a debate on the pensions bill in the Senate, the unions are striving to make my holiday uncomfortable. I'll be in the thick of it. Hopefully, the massive protests won't interrupt my flight home. It should be anything but boring!


Photo Francois Mori/AP

Paris with Hillary - the 3rd Arrondissement

Watch more Paris videos at tripfilms.com

These cute and compelling videos are the product of director, cinematographer and editor Elena Rossini.
After leaving Italy in 1998 at the age of 18, Elena has since lived and worked in the US, Britain and France.

Since graduating from Boston University with a degree in Mass Communication, the young film-maker spent a semester in London, interning at the Royal Academy of Arts. At Boston's Emerson College, Elena pursued her Master’s in Visual and Media Arts with a focus on Film Directing.

Dove Sei Tu, a 90-minute drama set between Milan, Lake Como and Rome is Elena Rossini's first feature-length film.  Other recent projects include the experimental documentary Direction, filmed in Tokyo and Paris, and Ideal Women, a short film contrasting beauty ideals in the art world with mass media.

Currently developing the feature-length documentary The Illusionists, Elena is also the creator of No Country for Young Women, an ongoing multimedia project striving to connect women across generations & nationalities on the topic of their careers.

Elena seems to have a great life and currently can be found in Paris or Milan.

Paris with Hillary - the 2nd Arrondissement

I found these great little videos about Paris on Tripfilms.com. Hosted by the effervescent Hillary, I find them charming. I only wish she'd made more.

Watch more Paris videos at tripfilms.com

The secret blunder that sank Titanic

Oh, dear, James Cameron will have to remake the movie.

This is a cropped photo of a hitherto unknown image of the Titanic as she left Southampton dock on April 10, 1912. The photo was taken by the superintendent of the docks. The original and the negative are the property of the Vancouver Maritime Museum.
Photograph by: File, PNG


By Richard Alleyne, The Daily Telegraph

It was always thought the Titanic sank because it was sailing too fast and its crew failed to see the iceberg before it was too late.

But now it has been revealed that the danger was spotted in plenty of time, only for the liner to steam straight into it because of a basic steering blunder.

According to a new report, the ship had plenty of time to miss the iceberg but the helmsman simply turned the wrong way. By the time the catastrophic error was corrected, it was too late and the side of the ship was fatally holed by the iceberg.

The disclosure, which comes out almost 100 years after the disaster, was kept secret until now by the family of the most senior officer to survive the disaster.

Second Officer Charles Lightoller covered up the error in two inquiries on both sides of the Atlantic because he was worried it would bankrupt the liner's owners and put colleagues out of a job.

Since his death in 1952 - by then a war hero after his role in the Dunkirk evacuation - the facts have remained hidden for fear they would ruin his reputation.

But now his granddaughter, the writer Lady (Louise) Patten, has revealed the sequence of events in her new novel, Good as Gold.

The error on the ship's maiden voyage between Southampton and New York in 1912 happened because at the time - in the midst of the conversion from sail to steam ships - there were two steering systems and different commands attached to them.

Crucially, the two systems were the opposite of one another. So a command to turn "hard a-starboard" meant turn the wheel right under the older tiller system and left under the rudder system.

When First Officer William Murdoch spotted the iceberg two miles away, his "hard a-starboard" order was misinterpreted by the Quartermaster Robert Hitchins, who turned the ship right instead of left. Even though he was almost immediately told to correct the mistake, it was too late.

"The steersman panicked and the real reason why Titanic hit the iceberg, which has never come to light before, is because he turned the wheel the wrong way," said Lady Patten the wife of the former Tory education minister, Lord (John) Patten.

To compound that straightforward error, Lady Patten said, the captain was convinced by Bruce Ismay, the chairman of Titanic's owner, the White Star Line, to continue sailing rather than stop. This added enormously to the pressure of water flooding through the damaged hull, sinking Titanic many hours earlier than it otherwise would have done.

© Copyright (c) The Daily Telegraph

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/secret+blunder+that+sank+Titanic/3563674/story.html#ixzz10Hy3KD00

Paris Hotels - My Pick

I've been crazily researching every aspect of my upcoming trip to Paris. I've checked out over 45 hotels through travel guides, Tripadvisor and websites. Google Maps is a big help determining the suitability of neighbourhoods and route-planning.

My criteria for choosing a hotel was:

1. That my hotel be small, less than 50 rooms. I don't do North-American-style hotels when I travel. Well, I guess I do when I'm in North America. Anyway - a pension-style hotel with a breakfast room is all I need.

2. That it be within easy walking distance of  the Île de la Cité. Although I've got a wheelie-bag and good walking shoes I wanted to be less than a mile from Notre Dame. For easier figuring I took a reading from Saint-Michel RER stop. 1 mile = 1.6 km

3. That it be less than $250 Canadian per night. Today $250 CA = 187 Euros.

4. That it received good reviews on Tripadvisor.

5. That the bedroom consist of  non-IKEA-style furniture.

Regarding Tripadvisor,  it's a good tool. I don't hold too much with other people's reviews because everyone's got their own set of criteria. But every picture's worth a thousand words. I know right away by checking out reviewer's hotel pictures if it's the right place for me.

On a general note, the hotel had to look like it would make me feel secure and comfortable returning to it after a long day.

The hotel I did pick did not meet one of my criteria. More about that when I get home.

I pared my list of 45 down to a final 8. Here are the finalists.

1. Hotel des Grandes Ecole

115-140 Euro
1.3 km from Saint-Michel RER stop.
51 rooms
No TV
This lovely pink and toile hotel is set in its own sizeable garden off the Rue Cardinal Lemoine. Charm at reasonable prices. I've wanted to stay there since 1992. Now I can afford it, they didn't return my email. It's so popular that they tell you when to attempt a reservation, (4 months in advance). I'm not staying here. http://www.france-hotel-guide.com/h75005ecoles.htm

2. Hotel des  Grand Hommes

100-270 Euro
1.1 km from Saint-Michel RER stop
31 rooms
Amazing location overlooking the Paris Pantheon. Beautifully decorated and larger bathrooms than most hotels.  Would not accept a reservation request through personal email. They wanted me to use the automated booking which frankly I don't trust. http://www.hoteldesgrandshommes.com/

3. Hotel du Pantheon

100-270 Euro
1.1 km from St. Michel RER stop
36 rooms
Located next door to its sister hotel, the Hotel des Grand Hommes. It's gorgeous too. http://www.hoteldupantheon.com/


4. Hotel Britannique

129-167 Euros
600 m from Saint-Michel RER stop
39 rooms
So close to the Louvre and the Seine, the Hotel Brittanique, located at 20 Avenue Victoria, originally appealed to me because of its history of being run by English-speakers. http://www.hotel-britannique.fr/index.html

5. Hotel Beaubourg

95--> Euro
1.2 km from Saint-Michel RER stop
28 rooms
The Beaubourg appealed to me because of its funky furnishings and its claim of a garden. It's on a small side street that empties out at the Centre Pompidou. http://www.beaubourg-paris-hotel.com/index.html

6. Hotel Henri IV Rive Gauche

159-185 Euro
.3km from Saint-Michel RER stop
23 rooms
The side-street rooms at the Hotel Henri IV Rive Gauche have amazing views of the Église Saint-Séverin. http://www.henri-paris-hotel.com/

7. Hotel Caron de Beaumarchais

145-185 Euro
1.3 km from Saint-Michel RER stop
19 rooms
The small rooms at this equally small hotel, located in the Marais, look absolutely charming. http://www.carondebeaumarchais.com/

8. Hotel de Lutece

155-195 Euro
1.3 km from Saint-Michel RER stop
23 rooms
Located on the Ile Saint.-Louis, (to quote Liz Lemon "I want to go to there"), the Hotel de Lutuce is a one minute walk to Berthillon, where I intend on having an ice cream.  http://www.paris-hotel-lutece.com/

For safety sake I'm not going to reveal where I'll be. I'll tell all when I get back. I did almost as much research in 2003 when I went with my family and the Hotel du College de France put us in a small "courtyard" room on the 1st floor overlooking the kitchen and the laundry room. Who knows what's in store for me.

I can't believe I'm actually doing this. Sometimes I feel like I've lost my mind completely. 3 weeks to go. Panic Attack!

HEY!!!!

A teenager was shot several times while on the basketball court outside my son's high school cafeteria at 4:45 in the afternoon. Thankfully it was Sunday. The victim is fighting for his life in hospital with wounds to his head chest and abdomen.

What can I say except get a grip. Channel your anger in more constructive ways. Quit playing with your life as if it were a video-game. The guns have got to go. There's a river of guns coming through the US border and they're ending up in the hands of marginalized kids with little education, few expectations and no dreams for the future.

photo: Citytv.com

une table pour un

I'm going to Paris. Alone. No, I haven't broken up with the Senior Pup. I need to revisit Paris at my own speed.

Over the past few weeks I've been trying to loose weight, learning a few phrases in French, and analyzing the contents of my closet. I'm really nervous to be traveling alone and to assuage that nervousness I've been researching my every move to death. Over the next few days, I'll post the fruit of all that research. I welcome your suggestions and comments.

There are a lot of great Paris-focused websites out there but I also find a lot of fakery. Not everyone knows the language (not me, thanks to my 1970's Ontario education!), not everyone is born understanding the Metro. Not everyone is comfortable walking into a foreign restaurant alone.  Paris is wonderful but not it's not all tulips,roses and macarons.When I return, I'll let you know how it went - warts and all. I'm sure I'll have an ubiquitous 'macaron' but I promise I'll not blog about it.

My week will be taken up with street markets, my own walking tours past the houses and haunts of artists and writers and eating out. Excursions to Giverny, Auvers sur Oise and eating out. The Musee D'Orsay, L'Orangerie and eating out. Le Bon Marche, covered passages and eating out.

My next post will be the hotels I researched. I welcome all your comments.

The great photo of  Boulevard Saint Michel is by Charles Bowman.

Paris Walks 5½ - An Afternoon at the Musée d'Orsay

Back across the Seine from the Tuileries, on the Left Bank, is the Musée d'Orsay. Formerly a train station, the Gare d’Orsay, until the late 1930s, this building has been turned into the one of the world’s pre-eminent art museums focusing on the Impressionists.

The interior space is wonderful, light and soaring due to the fact that it was a rail terminus. Architect Gae Aulenti transformed this space into a Museum in 1986. In my favourite movie, A Very Long Engagement, director Jean Pierre Jeunet is able to turn the gallery back into the train station circa 1920.

The reason we visit the Musée d'Orsay is that we love the Impressionists and Post- Impressionist Vincent Van Gogh. Our favourite self portrait of Van Gogh hangs here as does his Portrait of Dr. Gachet and the Church at Auvers.

The Musée d'Orsay has some of the world’s most famous impressionist paintings. Pierre-Auguste Renoir's — Bal au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre is on exhibit. Monet is represented here with several paintings including Blue Waterlilies. Pissarro, Cezanne and Seurat are displayed as well.

Manet, the father of impressionism is here too. The incredibly famous and widely mimicked Dejeuner sur l’Herbe hangs in Room 38.

Manet’s superb Olympia is on display. It’s very hard to believe that critics in Manet’s day thought this painting was a travesty. The 1863 public showing of Olympia caused an outburst of angry public opinion. It was ridiculed to such an extent at the Paris Salon that Manet established his own salon, the Salon des Refusés.

One gallery attendee stated,

"a wretched model picked up from heaven knows where"

Another declared,

"a sort of female gorilla"

When interviewed the poet Theophile Gautier had nothing but harsh words for the painting.

"Olympia can be understood from no point of view, even if you take it for what it is, a puny model stretched out on a sheet. The color of the flesh is dirty, the modeling nonexistent."

How much our ideas and tastes have changed over the years.

Degas’ Little Dancer is there, cast in bronze and still wearing a faded pink tutu. Whistler’s Mother is here too.


If I only had a couple of days in Paris, which it seems I only ever do, I would recommend a visit to the Musée d'Orsay and save the Louvre for a longer holiday. I find it much more enjoyable, manageable and easier on the lower back.

9.30am to 6pm
9.30am to 9.45pm on Thursdays
Closed on Mondays

Full rate: € 8
Concessions: € 5.50 €
Under18s and members: free

1, rue de la Légion d'Honneur, 75007 Paris

Paris Walks 5 - Fun and Romance in the Tuileries

After Deyrolle on the Rue du Bac, we weren’t very far from our destination that day – the Musee Dorsay.

But as we’d been walking and visiting and peeking in bookstores since 8:30 that morning I was pretty cranky with hunger. My husband doesn’t suffer from this affliction. But my empty tummy leads to a bad mood that can spoil the whole day.

G is a Leo and I think that has something to do with making sure he has the perfect backdrop, soundtrack, clothes, before he can enjoy himself – meaning instead of eating on the steps of the Museum we had to walk the extra ¼ mile to cross the footbridge across the Seine and eat in the Tuileries. Which was a very good idea.

We had packed a picnic of sorts the night before; a bag of really rich mini-croissants and Baby Bell cheeses, juices. Some yogurts we had picked up a long the way. We plunked ourselves down on a bench and had our picnic.

The three of us were amazed to find that the old stereotype of Paris being for lovers was true. On almost every bench there were couples kissing, embracing or in some sort of romantic clinch. At one point a couple got up, dusted themselves off and were replaced on the bench with another couple who started necking almost immediately.

We ate our Baby Bell goudas which came at that time with a toy. This time it was a long colourful sausage-shaped balloon with a plastic squeaker attached to the end. This was a great delight to N. who was 9 at the time. We’d blow it up for him and it would squeal along the boulevards between the chestnuts in the Tuileries. Time after time we’d blow it up and N would run after it down the paths, jumping and laughing. At one point the balloon got caught in a tree and with some improvising and a rake that we found and bashing the tree with my purse we got the balloon to fall.

All this levity and a full stomach prepared me for the visit to the Musee Dorsay.



Photo 1 is actually the promenade at the Hotel des Invalides, but you get the point.

Photo 2 IS the Tuileries. I saved about 5 years ago. I don't know where it came from but the man in the 3rd chair from the left looks so much like my husband I really thought it was he.

Paris Walks 4 - Deyrolle - A Cabinet of Curiosities

Deyrolle - 46 Rue de Bac

I had first heard of Deyrolle in Adam Gopnik’s book Paris to the Moon and made a mental note to one day visit this cool menagerie of stuffed animals. Gopnik tells us how he takes his toddler Luke on a daily trip to this bizarre and beautiful taxidermists so Luke can fulfill his wish to see the animals.

In 2003, like Gopnik, I introduced Deyrolle to son and my husband. They had no idea what was in store for them and neither did I.

When we went in the main doors of Deyrolle we were visually greeted by a pair of standing gazelles wearing gardening aprons. Adjusting the incongruous outfits was a chap telling us about his “gardening line” and how we should plan on visiting it. “Blah!” I thought, nonplussed at first, thinking something cutesy was going on. I later found out this fellow was Prince Louis-Albert de Broglie, a member of a distinguished French family. After giving up a banking career he started a national tomato conservatory. His friends mocked him, calling him the Prince Jardinier, or gardener prince. He also created the Prince Jardinier label of garden implements and a line of attractive, long-lasting gardening clothes that were presently displayed on the gazelles. Broglie visited Deyrolle when he was 5 and bought the place in 2001.

Anyway, up the stairs we went and found ourselves in gaping at the scene in front of us. Housed in a series of high-ceilinged, high-windowed rooms were stuffed animals: lions, leopards, geese, monkeys and a miniature donkey; a giant water buffalo and a polar bear. Birds were posed in full-flight or perched on branches under glass. Dogs apparently slept in the aisles. My son (9 at the time) was a little put-off. After all it was a little macabre.

But I found that Deyrolle was more like an 18th-century cabinet de curiosités than just a taxidermists. Botanical and zoological charts were for sale but other charts adorning the walls looked like they had been there since 1881 (since the store moved to its present location. Some of the charts can be seen (I think) in Mathilde’s bedroom in Jean Pierre Jeunet’s, A Very Long Engagement.

A worker in the furthest room had received an order of shiny beetles from the tropics and was gently unwrapping them. Drawer after drawer that I carefully pulled open were full of a multitude of butterflies, scarabs, and gently folded birds.

For generations people have been visiting Deyrolle and have a special place in their hearts for it. I admit I was in a bit of panic when I first heard the second floor had been severely damaged in a fire almost exactly a year ago. I’m on their mailing list and was puzzled and dismayed to see them asking me to contribute to Deyrolle’s rebuilding by buying a commemorate Hermes scarf. I hear Deyrolle has been restored but with 90% of its inventory gone – I can't see how. It’s one of those things in the world that can never be replicated and we’ll never see its like again. If anyone is brave enough to return, please let me know how it is. In the meantime I recommend everyone Google this fantastic place to see how intriguing and wonderful it once was.

Paris Walks 3 - The Cathedral of the Rive Gauche - Saint-Sulpice

Saint- Sulpice - south of St Germain on Rue Saint-Sulpice.

I was interested in this church because I had seen it in Sally Potter’s film The Tango Lesson. Within Saint-Sulpice she and Pablo Veron recreated a Eugène Delacroix painting displayed there entitled Jacob Wrestling with the Angel.

Saint-Sulpice is a huge, late-Baroque edifice built on the site of a 13th Century Romanesque church. The new building was founded in 1646 and mostly completed in 1732. Saint-Sulpice is only slightly smaller than Notre-Dame and therefore the second largest church in Paris. Known as the "Cathedral of the Rive Gauche," the Église Saint-Sulpice has seen some unlikely rites of passage over the years, including the christening of the Marquis de Sade and the poet Charles Baudelaire, and the wedding of the irreverent author Victor Hugo.

Popular with tourists thanks to its prominent role in the novel The Da Vinci Code, fans will be interested in finding the narrow brass strip called the Rose Line that the monk uses as a reference point in his quest. But this “Rose Line” is really part of a sundial.

In 1727 the priest of Saint-Sulpice, requested the construction of a gnomon (part of a sundial that casts the shadow) in the new church to help him determine the time of the equinoxes and therefore, Easter. English clock-maker and astronomer Henry Sully inlaid a line of brass across the floor which ascended to the top of an 11-meter-high white marble obelisk. In an opposite window Sully set up a small opening with a lens so that a ray of sunlight could shine onto the brass line. Still, at noon on the winter solstice (December 21), a ray of light touches the brass line on the obelisk. At noon on the equinoxes (March 21 and September 21), a ray touches a copper plate in the floor near the altar.

Although Paris has a Rose Line or or “The Paris Meridian” featured in Dan Brown’s book, the gnomen in Saint-Sulpice is not part of it. The actual Paris meridian passes close by, about 100 meters east of the gnomon. Sully’s gnomen was also used for various scientific measurements.

http://www.paroisse-saint-sulpice-paris.org/
Photo Ben Murray