Who among us would not like to be in Paris for this? The third annual festival organized by the famed left bank bookstore takes place June 12-15 and will feature Paul Auster, Jeannette Winterson, June Chang and Alain de Botton, among others. This year’s theme: “Exploring Memoir and Biography.” (Via TEV and IHT)

Photo by ktylerconk via Flickr, (Createive Commons).

Clotilde Dusoulier, the popular food blogger from France, has written a new guidebook that features her favorite restaurants, markets and shops in Paris. The 28-year-old former software engineer’s book gives tips not only on where to find the best Tarte-Gateau Poire Chocolat (pear and chocolate cake-tart) but on how to mind your manners when it comes to dining and food-shopping with the French. (Hint: Don’t dis the food.)

Photo by grahamandsheila via Flickr (Creative Commons).

We noted recently that, given the weak dollar, American travelers are looking beyond the usual Western Europe destinations. That’s fine, but it’s nice to hear about one traveler who’s holding firm. In a letter from Paris posted on the South Florida Sun-Sentinel travel blog, sports writer Charles Bricker writes: “Damn the exchange rate ... It’s still Paris. The parks and the sidewalks are free, the weather is in the 80s and where else would you rather be?” Good point.

Photo by pedrosimoes7 via Flickr (Creative Commons).

The president of the Hookah Professionals’ Union—yes, there is such a thing—told the International Herald Tribune that about a third of France’s 800 hookah bars have closed since a ban on indoor smoking took effect Jan. 2.

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Doug Saunders has a dilemma. When he dines, he prefers to have an “intimate relationship” with his food, free from “the tyranny of company.” But in Paris, he writes in a recent Globe and Mail story, eating alone can get you an odd reception: “The French, as the old cliché suggests, approach the dining experience as something akin to the act of lovemaking. So imagine how they feel when you set out to do it in front of them without a partner.”

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Travelers who love architecture and museums are well aware of Renzo Piano’s work. He has 12 museums or additions under his architectural belt—including Paris’ must-see Pompidou Centre, pictured—and several more in the works.

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In honor of this weekend’s Oscars ceremony, I’ve put together a few shout-outs to some of my favorite travel-related movie moments of the year. These picks make an odd collection, but each one made me curious about a place I’d never been, or made me see one that I had visited in an entirely new light.

Best Turning of a Romantic Travel Cliché on its Head
2 Days in Paris
Plenty of movies show people falling in love, in two days, in Paris. In fact, in a global vote for the most romantic city in the world, Paris would probably be John McCain to everywhere else’s Mike Huckabee. So it’s a bold move on director Julie Delpy’s part to chronicle the unraveling of a relationship there instead. 

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Plenty of cities have imposed smoking bans in bars and restaurants by now, but it’s rare that they chip away at a world-renowned image in the process. In Paris, on the other hand, where the city’s identity seems more intimately connected with smoking, the ban that came into force Jan. 1 has the potential to alter more than just the air quality. 

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He’s 40-year-old Stéphane Urbain, he’s trained as a chemist and, yes, he wears a cape. The New York Times details his rise to become the chief bell ringer at Paris’s Cathedral of Notre Dame, and why his musicality has been controversial.

Related on World Hum:
* Paris Mayor to Parisians: Be Nice to Tourists, S’il Vous Plait
* ‘Forget Waterloo’: New Train Route Bringing ‘Two Old Foes Closer’

Photo by chelseagirl, via Flickr (Creative Commons)

For months now, NPR’s correspondents have been tempting devoted foodies like me with delicious reviews of noteworthy restaurants, bistros and cafes around the world. Among other things, they’ve sampled creamy orange hot chocolate in Berlin, camel’s milk desserts in Nairobi and blue corn quesadillas with zucchini flowers in Mexico City. The latest dispatch comes from senior European correspondent Sylvia Poggioli, who sampled pan-fried shrimp with red onions and fresh coriander, spiced pumpkin soup with mushrooms and a dessert of oranges, yellow and black carrots and yuzu sorbet at Le Train Bleu in Paris.

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France’s high-speed rail network, which has been coping with a labor strike, was hit by fires and other acts of sabotage overnight, according to reports. But in unrelated news, there’s at least one glimmer of good news coming from some rail service in the region. Historical enemies France and England are getting soft-eyed over the new high-speed rail link between Paris and London, according to the New York Times. A recent full-page ad in the French newspaper Le Figaro declared “Oubliez Waterloo”—forget Waterloo. And the English were talking not about Napoleon’s last stand but the former Waterloo rail terminus station.

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The Museum of Immigration History in Paris seeks to tackle one of the most incendiary subjects in France, and, according to a story in The Globe and Mail, its creators certainly don’t see themselves in an impartial role. “Ever since the word ‘immigrant’ appeared in our vocabulary in the late 19th century, it has had a negative connotation—connoting a menace, an inassimilable foreigner, a potential criminal, a polygamist and now a terrorist,” Gérard Noiriel, one of the curators, told the Globe. “Our job is to change that point of view.”

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