Posts Tagged ‘Paris’
Listening To: Ray-Ban Exclusive Volume 11
It’s the eleventh volume of my ongoing Ray-Ban Exclusive series – playlists made for feeling good. Sometimes I make them monthly, sometimes not, but the goal is to put together some new and old music for the ultimate playlist that helps you get creative/dance/energize/feel good (you’ll probably want coffee).
A little bit of remix, a little bit of dance, and a little funky, they’re made for listening to while wearing your hippest shades. The latest volume was made with an extra bit of European love, with some new favorites like Keziah Jones and Alt-J.
Biking in Paris
Everywhere I travel, I try to ride a bike. It’s one of those weird obsessions that I have; the need to discover everything on two wheels. Be it Afghanistan or Amsterdam, game on.
Here’s the thing about riding a bicycle in new places: it’s like learning how to ride a bike all over again. No matter how used to the bicycle you are – at home in Portland I don’t even own a car – discovering a new city on two wheels makes you fall in love with cycling all over again. It’s a challenge. Navigating streets you have never walked down before, learning the ins and outs of local bike culture, figuring out how traffic works. There’s a flow to cycling, and each city has its own variation.
Paris vs. New York: The Video
I have always loved the Paris vs. New York print series, a simple representation of the difference between the two cosmopolitan capitals. This video pulls it all together.
Paris vs. New York: Coffee
I love the Paris vs. New York collection of prints (and it’s a book). This one sort of says it all though.
Today I’m Dreaming Of…
Paris.
La vie en français.
Un café crème.
Une promenade au soleil.
Paris, tu me manques.
Oh how this makes we want to hop on a plane and do a study abroad program all over again.
Via: Prêt à voyager
IKEA Takes Over Paris Metro
Ah the combination of my two foreign loves, Sweden and France… Here’s a fun Friday post:
Forget a boring commute. In Paris, between now and March 24, the metro is being turned into a comfortable living room. That’s thanks to a marketing initiative by IKEA, which is turning 4 metro stations into furnished interiors.
A crazy marketing campaign? Maybe, but it is ingenious in that it gets people passing by to interact with the product. And ask any metro goer and I’m sure they’ll take a comfortable couch over a gum-covered steel bench.
More pics after the jump.
Paris Bike-share Program Vélib is Getting Even Bigger
It was revolutionary. Bike blogs, sustainability gurus and national news outlets all gave ample to time to Paris when the city launched its commendable Vélib bike-sharing program. A year and a half later, the existing fleet of bicycles is expanding, ready to take over the suburbs.
The program is so popular with Parisians that “Velib” was the 2nd most popular Google search. So with an additional 300 stations and 3,300 not renting a bicycle while touring Paris just won’t be an option, and ça, c’est super!
[Via Bike-sharing Blog]
Back to the grind
A three day weekend means it’s been a little hard to get back in front of the computer and start attacking real work once again. Despite a three hour drive to get back to Portland in the morning, and a full day of Wend work, today was still my day to post at Written Road… fortunately I remembered that the deadline for the Solas Awards for Best Travel Writing are coming up soon!
With a crazy summer I haven’t put aside any time for personal writing (I know… that’s bad), but the deadline for the awards reminded me of last year at around this time when I was putting together my own submission. It ended up winning Gold in the Family Travel category… which reminds me that I probably should be committing more time to crafting decent narratives (where does all the time in a week go??) So in honor of sitting down with pen and paper and elaborating on travel experiences instead of getting stuck in the daily grind of the blogosphere, and to give myself a bit of writer’s encouragement, here is an excerpt from Everday Parisian Theatrics:
Theater and film are almost as essential to the romantic Parisian image as Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower. Acting has always played a revered role in French culture, and from grandiose theater productions to cinema classics, the rest of the world has had the chance to taste the artistic delicacies that the country is known for. We have all been seduced by French film. Some of us are drawn to the amorous sounds of the French language spoken between young idealists, dressed in black, their souls engaged in debates on existentialism. Others glue themselves to the screen to consume the simple oddities that paint the picture of Paris street life, infused with the character that the city is so well known for. And some are merely enticed by imagining that such a world actually exists beyond the screen. We fall in love with French cinema, because the screenwriters that the country is known for magically bring together everyday simplicity with cosmopolitan complexity.
Read the rest here.
blog.annabrones.com 