Special Report: Discover Paris!™

Université de Paris Descartes, rue de l’École de Médecine,  October 21, 2010

One thing I have been enjoying very much about my time in Paris is having the privilege of meeting up with folks who are doing very innovative and dynamic things. I had such a privilege this past month when I met up with Tom Reeves and Monique Y. Wells of Discover Paris!™.

In a “professional” sense, this is my review of some of the pursuits Tom and Monique are making with their business, but in a private, personal sense, I’m sharing what they are doing as my newest expat acquaintances with whom I really “clicked” and felt that immediate personal connection we sometimes do with kindred spirits. Do you know what I mean?

While I have kind of avoided going the “review route” with my blog because this blog is mostly my personal journal of how I try to cope in the City of Light, not me trying to be a professional writer/journalist/blogger or anything like that, if I meet someone who is working on a business project as a self-employed entrepreneur, and I like what’s going on, you bet I am game for writing about it!

So without further ado, let me introduce Tom and Monique’s various projects and my thoughts about them. I hope that if you are reading this, and you are visiting Paris any time soon, you will consider using their services as you tour this city, especially if you would like a historical, cultural, and more-than-surface look at Paris’s past and present.

Vacances

A Beach in Juan Les Pins

Here’s a vacation postcard from me to you, dear Readers. I hope you enjoy it. Can you picture yourself here, on the beach, in the South of France? I hope this brings a little escape into your day.

So.

Most of August has passed us by. I guess my blog decided that it was going to go on vacation along with me. 🙂

An Adventure Along the Rue de Mouzaïa (19th arr.)

Hello All!

I have given the blog a little makeover to go along with my shorter hair and started using the ever-popular “Mistylook” theme here on WordPress. While it seems that *everyone* is using it, I like its clean lines, fonts, and links, and it was just time for a little change here as well. The color scheme is very similar to the one before, though, so not all is completely different.

I’d meant to keep my original header photo so that my blog would not look too different, but now I can’t find the photo I used for it. Eh, it’s somewhere. Instead, out of laziness at not wanting to hunt it down, I picked another photo which is of the belvedère from the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, and which was also a part of the original header photo I used.

Like Living in a Children’s Book…

This week, I read another post by one of my most favorite “Mom Bloggers” in the world, Betsy Shaw. She posts on not only her personal blog Numbmum, but is also a long-time writer for the BabyCenter MOMformation website, posting under the blogname “Babe’s Blog.” A couple of the reasons I like Betsy’s blogs is that we are about the same age, have a youngest child born in the same week (early November 2005), and both live in France — Betsy and her family have been in rural Burgundy for about a year now (maybe just over that…).

Because of something she wrote on her most recent post “Arranged Marriages and Angry Bedtime Stories,” I got inspired to write about something I have been meaning to for about three months now: An Adventure Along the Rue de Mouzaïa.

In the post, she describes the clarinet playing of neighbor boy Oliver. Using lovely imagery, Betsy captured the moment and made me feel like I was there. It was this couple of sentences that inspired me the most:

It [Oliver’s playing the clarinet next door] makes life feel as rich and quirky and full of color as a children’s book. The way life should feel.

“YES!” I thought, reading those lines. That IS the way life should feel! I also realized that the simile captured how I felt about the Rue de Mouzaïa and meeting Peter Olson of Peter’s Paris — like I was living in a children’s book, where life is rich, quirky, and full of color.

So, I bring to you An Adventure Along the…

Tucked away in the middle of the 19th arrondissement, nestled in the center of Métro line 7 bis, is an area of streets containing charming late-19th Century row houses, designed (mostly) by French architect Paul Casimir Fouquiau. On a very chilly December 14 (2009)  Monday morning, Peter Olson of Peter’s Paris and I met to check out this off-the-beaten-path area of the 19th in Paris and see what we could trouver.

I like the French verb “trouver,” to find; it makes me think of treasure troves, mysteries solved, and discoveries made. Peter and I found some unique things on our journey that day, including the discovery of common interests and friendship. Keep reading to trouver for yourself about what we found.