"L’Art de vivre à la française"

Be it Covid-19 or not, there are still several hundred thousand walkers who would come to survey the Champs-Élysées at the end of the year 2021. Nearly a million decorative LEDs are traditionally installed on the 400 plane trees of the famous avenue on Christmas. This extraordinary show remains visible until the beginning of the year 2022, to the delight of onlookers. The present mayor of Paris, Mme Anne Hidalgo says about it: "By lighting up for Christmas, the Champs-Élysées embody all the spirit of the end-of-year celebrations and invite every Parisian to experience a moment of fraternal sharing with his friends and relatives”...

If Devil wears Prada, - Paris wears Haussmann when talking of architecture style) "The city was not like it is behind my shoulders today"…the way I was narrating to my new discoverers of Paris. The visitors from Italy have stopped in the hotel boulevard Haussmann. The day I fetched them from the hotel started with the questions about who this Haussmann actually is? And why he is so important for Paris that the boulevards and the streets and the architecture, the whole city, in the end, is telling about his personality?

There exists no word “impossible” for Paris. The most eccentric, provocative, and daring ideas find their incarnation here. So happened with the idea of artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude. More than 20 years ago an unusual project came into the mind of this Bulgarian artist and his wife; to envelope one of the most emblematic monuments of Paris into polypropylene! Don’t ask me why. Who had ever revealed the mystery of the artist's soul?

Here it is, the great day has come! Paris celebrates the reopening of the Hôtel de la Marine after almost 5 years of renovation works as do the impatient visitors and locals. I was among the first wishful to discover this legendary building as soon as possible. The rendez-vous- is in the Place de la Concorde. What can be more emblematic in Paris than this place?

What made me write about Giverny garden this very moment? The thing is, I adore roses in their full blossom. The high time of this extraordinary performance comes mostly in June and July. And one of the best places to admire and savor this sublime beauty is Monet’s gardens in Giverny of course. It's a permanent explosion of colors and emotions. And It is certainly unmissable if you’re by any chance in Normandy...