Happy Premier Mai

I am so happy to wish you a beautiful May 1st with this huge bunch of muguet (lily of the valley) which I picked especially for you yesterday. This year the lily of the valley came later but bloomed in one week with the hot weather and now the rain. Everyone in France is celebrating our “labor” day and I … Read More

Jacques Genin, a chocolate genius!

  His reputation is that one has to eat his chocolates the day they are made and his metal boxes are devised to keep them fresh for a fortnight… Jacques Genin has a corner chocolate store on rue du Bac and rue de Varenne and it is hard to resist his lovely Easter bunnies and hens. He was recommended to … Read More

Joyeux, there are many reasons to love this place!

Yann Bucaille Lanrezac is a dreamer. But before dreaming, he became a successful businessman in Brittany and in 2012, he bought a catamaran named Ephata. He used it to take autistic children and/or with drown syndrome for a day’s sail. Six thousand so far have been on the boat. One day, a young woman told him: “I don’t need a … Read More

Merry Christmas, Joyeux Noël, from Paris

I looked around Paris to find a pretty Christmas tree for you, all the hotels are lit in the most exquisite way but the most glamorous decor is certainly that of Opera Garnier where I heard a wonderful “Clemenzia de Tito” with Stéphanie d’Oustrac in Sesto and Ramon Vargas in Tito.  The Foyer has never looked so good!

Bayonne celebrates the Gramont in style

We were eight members of the Gramont family to make the trip on the new four hour TGV to Bayonne, in the Pyrénées Atlantiques. Our ancestors Roger, Jean, Antoine I, were mayors and captains Antoine II, III and IV were governors of the town from the 16 th to the 18 th century. The occasion was the inauguration of an … Read More

Emile Guimet travels around the world in his own museum

Emile Guimet, the founder of Musée National des Arts Asiatiques, was born in Lyon, in 1838, the son of a chemist who invented a special ultramarine blue. His family’s wealth enabled him to travel extensively, first to Egypt in the 1860’s, then for ten months around America and Asia with an artist, Félix Régamey , a friend of Verlaine and Rimbaud, … Read More

Alfred de Montesquiou takes us on a dream adventure

Alfred de Montesquiou, already a veteran journalist at 39, has covered wars in the Middle East for Associated Press and Paris Match and was awarded the prestigious Prix Albert Londres for his covering of the Arab Spring revolts.  He has been commissioned by Arte, the French German television channel, to do a series on the Silk Road which is being … Read More