Monday, 23 April 2012

Paris Highlights

1 Eiffel Tower

The view of the ‘city of light’ by night is mesmerizing from the tip of the city’s iconic spire, with its 360-degree panoramas over Paris.
Over 250 million people have ascended the tower to date. Most visit its three platforms (57m, 115m and 276m) in daytime hours, when, on a clear day, views from the top extend up to 60km. Far fewer visitors make the pilgrimage after sunset, when queues are significantly shorter. Night-time at the top can be breezy – bring a jacket…

2 Musée d’Orsay

The home of France’s national collection from the Impressionist, Post-impressionist and Art Nouveau movements is, appropriately, the glorious former Gare d’Orsay Art Nouveau railway station.
On the ground floor you’ll find earlier works of the era, while the middle level has some stunning Art Nouveau rooms and sculptures. On the skylit upper level, masterpieces include Manet’s On The Beach; Renoir’s Ball at the Moulin de la Galette; Degas’ ballerinas and Van Gogh’s scenes of Auvers-sur-Oise just outside Paris (where he died and is buried).

3 Jardin du Luxembourg

The merest ray of sunshine is enough to draw apartment-dwelling Parisians outdoors. You’ll see locals unwinding throughout the city: in parks, on bridges and on the banks of the Seine. But the Luxembourg Gardens have a special place in the hearts of Parisians.
Napoleon dedicated the gardens to the children of Paris, and many residents spent their childhood prodding little wooden sail boats with long sticks on the octagonal pond, watching marionettes perform Punch & Judy–type shows, and riding the carousel (merry-go-round) or ponies.

4 Markets

Nowhere encapsulates Paris’ village atmosphere more than its street markets. Not simply places to shop, the markets are social gatherings for the entire neighbourhood, where residents toting quintessentially Parisian canvas shopping bags on wheels chat with stallholders and pick up culinary tips.

5 Mosquée de Paris

Built between 1922 and 1926 and topped by a 26m-high minaret, Paris’ art deco–Moorish mosque is a treat off the beaten track. Provided you’re modestly dressed, you can wander through the colonnaded courtyards – with incredible acoustics during the Call to Prayer – and leaf through ancient Arabic texts in the library.

6 Shakespeare & Co

A kind of spell descends as you enter this cluttered, charming bookshop opposite Notre Dame. Its enchanting nooks and crannies overflow with new and secondhand English-language books, while amid handpainted quotations and a wishing well, a miniature staircase leads to an atticlike reading library.
The bookshop is the stuff of legends. The original shop (12 rue l’Odéon; closed by the Nazis in 1941) was run by Sylvia Beach and became the meeting point for Gertrude Stein’s ‘Lost Generation’. Beach published James Joyce’s Ulysses there in 1922, when no one else would.

7 Île St Louis

The Île St-Louis’ tiny streets – where you’ll still see the odd Citroën 2CV among its few cars – are a quiet respite from the city’s hubbub. Quaint shops are dotted around the island, while its riverbanks and bridges are idyllic for listening to buskers or just watching the riverboats glide by. A stroll here is a favourite pastime for Parisians as well as visitors, but it wouldn’t be complete without a cone of Berthillon ice cream in hand.

8 The Louvre

Stretching a whopping 700m along the Seine, it’s estimated it would take nine months just to glance at every artwork in the world’s largest museum.
But – with a bit of planning – it doesn’t disappoint.
Save time by purchasing your ticket from the Louvre’s website, ticket agencies, or machines in the Carrousel du Louvre beforehand. Museum tickets are valid all day, so you can take a break any time.

9 Promenade Plantée

Climbing the stairs from the busy Bastille quarter’s av Daumesnil brings you out on top of the viaduct that has been turned into the tranquil Promenade Plantée. Planted with a fragrant profusion of cherry trees, maples, rosebushes and lavender, it’s a haven that feels far from the madding crowds four storeys below.

10 Cimetière du Père Lachaise

Paris is a collection of villages, and this 48-hectare cemetery of cobbled lanes and elaborate tombs the size of small houses qualifies as one in its own right.
Among the cemetery’s celebrity residents are the composer Chopin; writers Molière, Apollinaire, Balzac, Proust, Wilde, Gertrude Stein (and Alice B Toklas) and Colette; artists Delacroix, Pissarro, Seurat and Modigliani; singers Édith Piaf and rock god Jim Morrison.

Love Chocolate ?!

Chocoholics, you’ve found your heaven. First, check out the top-end goods – a visit to one of Robert Linxe’s Maison du Chocolat stores will start you drooling. Then stop for refreshment at a chocolate cafe before booking in at the Lenôtre Culinary School for a cocoa cooking-class. And, if you’ve timed your trip at the right time, sample the chocolate demonstrations, fashion shows and sculptures of the Salon du Chocolat festival.

Nice

Blue umbrellas and people crowd beach.


Sure, sun seekers sip cocktails on parasoled lounges lining its polished pebbled shores, and kids splash in the azure sea, while bladers cruise the curved Baie des Anges (Bay of Angels) against a backdrop of fairy-lit palm trees flanking the promenade des Anglais.

But Nice is much more than just a place for fun in the sun. Art aficionados’ must-sees include major museums. Archaeological buffs ruminate over the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Cemenelum. Flaneurs ferret out secret passages leading to narrow pedestrian laneways in the romantic old town, lingering over the sights and scents of the colourful flower and produce markets, and trawling for antiques. Festival fans descend for animated events. Gastronomes go gaga over finely prepared food, from chic little bolt holes to family-style French cooking and Michelin-starred cuisine. Barflies flit to the perpetually-buzzing watering holes, and hipsters hop between ever-emerging hotspots
Sun baking on busy pebble beach on the Riviera.

Monaco

Monaco crest and flags flying in Place du Casino in front of Monte Carlo Casino.

After scaling Monaco’s steep terraced steps, shiny escalators and gleaming marble corridors tunnelling through the rocks to a series of free public lifts running up and down the hillside, you could be forgiven for thinking you’re inside a life-size MC Escher illustration of an illusionary maze.
Squeezed into 1.95 sq km, making it the world’s second smallest country, after the Vatican, this pint-sized principality is a sovereign state, with its own red-and-white flag, national holiday (19 November), country telephone code and traditional Monégasque dialect. French is the official language.
 
Monaco’s manicured streets presided over by palaces and its lush fountained parks are eminently safe thanks to a prolific police presence backed up by plain-clothed patrollers and omnipresent CCTV cameras.
Monaco is most famed for its glamorous Monte Carlo casino, Formula One cars roaring through the streets during its glamorous Grand Prix, and the scintillating lives of its glamorous royal family, the Grimaldis.



Opulent fine-dining establishment Restaurant Louis XV at elegant Hotel de Paris.Beach goers enjoying Larvotto Beach on summer's day.
 


Paris probably has more familiar landmarks than any other city in the world. As a result, first-time visitors often arrive in the French capital with all sorts of expectations: of grand vistas, of intellectuals discussing weighty matters in cafés, of romance along the Seine, of naughty nightclub revues, of rude people who won’t speak English. If you look hard enough, you can probably find all of those. But another approach is to set aside the preconceptions of Paris and to explore the city’s avenues and backstreets as if the tip of the Eiffel Tower or the spire of Notre Dame wasn’t about to pop into view at any moment.




Eiffel Tower
When it was built for the 1889 Exposition Universelle (World Fair), marking the centenary of the Revolution, the Tour Eiffel faced massive opposition from Paris’ artistic and literary elite. The ‘metal asparagus’, as some Parisians snidely called it, was almost torn down in 1909 but was spared because it proved an ideal platform for the transmitting antennas needed for the new science of radiotelegraphy. Named after its designer, Gustave Eiffel, the tower is 324m high, including the TV antenna at the tip. This figure can vary by as much as 15cm, however, as the tower’s 7300 tonnes of iron, held together by 2.5 million rivets, expand in warm weather and contract when it’s cold.

Monday, 16 April 2012

ST. Tropez

The quayside at St Tropez, the tiny village is still a lure to artists and the wealthy - Saint Tropez, Provence-Alpes-Cote D'Azure


Characterised by sunset-hued pink, orange and deep red townhouses framing its flotilla-filled port, St-Tropez is, effectively, two different towns, depending on the season. If you visit during the madness that is midsummer, when the population increases tenfold, you’ll tear your hair out looking for a parking space or a seat at a quay-side café, and be hard pressed to squeeze past the tourist throngs clogging the cobblestone streets.
 
St-Tropez acquired its name in AD 68 when a Roman officer named Torpes was beheaded on Nero’s orders in Pisa, and packed into a boat with a dog and a rooster to devour his remains. His headless corpse washed up here intact, leading the villagers to adopt him as their patron saint.

 
There are a few options available for getting around  St. Tropez.
Bus: 
St-Tropez bus station (av Général de Gaulle) is on the southwestern edge of town on the main road.
Boat:
Les Bateaux Verts www.bateauxverts.com  operates a shuttle-boat service from St-Tropez to Ste-Maxime

Things to do?

Coastal walks:
Ramatuelle tourist office organises balades nature (guided nature walks) to Cap Camarat, Cap Taillat and elsewhere on the peninsula.
Additionally, a scenic coastal path wends its way past rocky outcrops and hidden bays 35km south from St-Tropez, around the Presqu'île de St-Tropez to the beach at Cavalaire-sur-Mer and beyond to Le Lavandou. In St-Tropez the coastal path, flagged with a yellow marker, starts at La Ponche, immediately east of Tour du Portalet at the northern end of quai Frédéric Mistral.

La Pouncho
Boat trips around the glamorous Baie des Cannebiers - dubbed the 'Bay of Stars' after the many celebrity villas dotting the coast - are advertised on boards along quai Suffren: La Pouncho runs four or five one-hour trips a day around the bay, March to October.
 
L' Esquinade
Where the party winds up when you want to dance till dawn. The only club open year-round is also the Tropéziens’ top choice.

Chez Nano
Chez Nano is a high-flyer cabaret bar best known for its raspberry champagne.

Le Club 55
What started out as a simple canteen for the crew of And God Created Woman in the 1950s is now the hippest joint on the beach. Dine at tightly packed tables beneath sails strung from trees, drink from plump white sofas on the sand, and pay to be a beach bum on a white cushioned mattress beneath umbrella or hip paillote on the designer beach. Rumbling tummies with no reservation can opt for a salad or sandwich at the twig-topped beach bar nearer the water.

Places Des Lices Market
The massive place des Lices Market is a jam-packed kaleidoscope of everything from fruit and veg to antique mirrors and slippers. It's truly legendary. It is studded with plane trees, cafés and pétanque players.
 
At the northern end of Plage des Salins, on a rock jutting out to sea, is the Tomb of Émile Olivier (1825-1913), who served as first minister to Napoleon III until his exile in 1870. Olivier's 17-volume L'Empire Libéral is preserved in the library of Château La Moutte, his former home on Cap des Salins. This is a must site to see for those history buffs!
Harbour boats and waterfront houses.


Bonjour!

Good, bad or ugly, everyone has something to say about France and the French: chic, smart, sexy, rude, racist, bureaucratic, bitchy as hell, pavements studded with dog poo, baguettes that dry out by lunchtime and a penchant for torching cars is some of the chitchat on the street.
The fabled land of good food and wine, of royal chateaux and perfectly restored farmhouses, of landmarks known the world over and hidden landscapes few really know. Savour art and romance in the shining capital on the River Seine. See glorious pasts blaze forth at Versaillies. Travel south for Roman civilisation and the sparkling blue Mediteranian and indulge your jet-set fantasiesin balmy Nice and St. Tropez.