Topics

Feb

A Tale of Love Locks—Can Love Conquer All?

by Meredith Mullins on February 9, 2015

Red heart in maze of Paris love locks showing romance in Paris and answering the question Can Love Conquer All (Photo © Meredith Mullins)

So many ways to say “I love you”
© Meredith Mullins

Romantic Paris: A Valentine’s Day Parable

Once upon a time, there was a city of light known as the most romantic city on Earth. Paris opened its heart to lovers around the world. Romance in Paris was a part of life.

Couples strolled the banks of the Seine arm in arm, kissed in the secret (and not-so-secret) corners of the well-tended gardens, and paused to embrace on the graceful bridges. Read more...

Meredith Mullins 2 Comments

Cultural Symbols/France (Paris)

Feb

Paris Celebrates the Circus Arts of Tomorrow

by Meredith Mullins on February 2, 2015

Travel pleasure provided by Matthew Richardson, a circus performer with the cyr wheel, demonstrating circus arts at the Paris Circus of Tomorrow (Photo © Meredith Mullins)

American Matthew Richardson suspended in his whirling cyr wheel at the Cirque de Demain
© Meredith Mullins

The Cirque de Demain is in Town: The Best of the World’s Young Circus Performers

Jugglers. Contortionists. Acrobats. Who doesn’t love the circus arts—graceful whirlers, sure-footed balancers, and people who fly through the air?

Performers spinning, hanging, tumbling, climbing, somersaulting, diving, stretching, and moving their bodies in mind-bending ways.

The Circus of Tomorrow is in town—the 36th annual Paris Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain. There are no lions or tigers clawing the air, no elephants laboring to lift themselves toward the tent top, no cartoonish clowns emerging from tiny cars. Read more...

Meredith Mullins 10 Comments

France (Paris)/On the World Stage

Nov

The Art of Traveling Without Preconceptions

by Meredith Mullins on November 19, 2014

The Ghost Town of Goussainville

I expected broken windows, graffiti, boarded up doors, wall-engulfing vines, dilapidation, decay, and, yes, even the occasional tumbleweed.

After all, Goussainville Vieux Pays had been described by many writers as a ghost town. A flurry of recent articles told the dramatic story of the exodus that had happened forty years earlier.

The images and words painted a bleak picture. A once-thriving farming village had died—an innocent victim of the invasive noise of a new airport. Read more...