We almost didn’t stop here because of the outrageous cost to get in but I’m so glad we did. We were able to save a few bucks by buying tickets at the hotel we stayed at the night before and you definitely need an entire day to see everything. Two pictures up from the bottom is a space shuttle launch pad and the fence around it is curved outward because alligators can climb chain link fences. I did not know…
Bonjour mes amis and bonjour Wednesday! I will be on my way tonight via red eye to NC for a week of visiting with friends and family. The purpose of the trip is to celebrate a 100th birthday party and if that’s not a good reason to fly across the country then I don’t know what is. Books For an update on the last WW post, so far I have made the quiche lorraine from How to Make a French…
On the morning of writing this post I had to scrape ice off my car. In APRIL. And it’s so cold in my house that the butter on my kitchen counter won’t soften. How am I supposed to do anything, involving butter or not, if the butter on my counter won’t get soft? I feel like I really got stuck on the wrong side of global warming. So because of these things, it was both dreamy and painful to look…
The Ernest Hemingway Home is so high up on my list of favorite attractions I’ve visited that it just might be at the very top. The beautiful house is on a large, lush space of land that is larger that you’re used to finding in the relatively small town of Key West. And that pool! He also used to have a cat walk that ran from the upper floor of the back porch on the house out to his writing…
Good morning everyone! I am so, so excited that Samantha has included Shelf Quest in the virtual tour of her new book, How to Make a French Family. How to Make A French Family is a delightful follow-up to Seven Letters from Paris (my review here). In this book, Samantha has moved to Cugnaux, a small town in southwestern France with her husband, Jean-Luc, and her stepchildren, Elvire and Max. Moving to a new country, being newly married, and suddenly being a…
Bonjour and welcome to my first Wednesday Whimsy post! I came up with the idea while in Paris, in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, and browsing French and Paris-themed articles. I have a lot of blogs, instagram accounts, movies, books, and online reads I regularly turn to or search out and thought I’d create a space to share all the good stuff. Originally I thought it would be a “French Friday” sort of thing but I found…
I had a lot of unsure feelings about The Bone Witch while reading it. I don’t love reading fantasy books set in a completely new world; it’s hard for me to have an anchor to them, something that connects me to and keeps me in that world. Too often authors describe the world as though what we should see is familiar, rather than it being described by an outsider that we can relate to. I did have a hard time…
In my defense, it was a trip for my 30th birthday. Oops, did I say that out loud? Originally I was thinking of going to Disneyland in California but then decided it wasn’t quite big enough for the big 3-0. I did a little research on flights to Paris and found some via Icelandair for $600 per person round trip and got Joe on board. We found an affordable Airbnb (the studio we stayed in is here) and suddenly my dream…
This is one of the most disappointing and most misleading books I have read in a very long time. Actually, I don’t think I have ever been so mislead by a book before. The full title is Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London but very little of the book is actually about the art of walking. Really, this book is a history of several women writer’s lives of the past with a mishmash of topics thrown in…
When I started A Homemade Life, I was a little disappointed. It is laid out as a short (around 3 pages) essay/story with a recipe or two to follow. Rinse and repeat. The first few were okay, but I had been hoping for something more like another book of hers I read, Delancy. However, a few stories in I changed my mind. Molly has such a charming way of writing that it makes me want to be a better writer…