Over the hills, under the moon - and off the beaten path

We're on our last day in Paris, and the stay has - once again - been a gorgeous experience. Friends, who haven't visited the city for a while, have asked us about how it is evolving. For some, Paris is probably now synonymous with armed police surveillance and  dread of terrorist attacks, of migrants camping in the streets, of piles of filth and garbage, of Paris, as one put it, being turned into a sh*thole! OK. There ARE people sleeping on benches or wrapped in cardboard boxes, but as far as we can see, most of them are not African migrants or fugitives. Most seem to be ethnic French, who have fallen through the security net of the welfare state, and even though the street people are far too many, the wast tent camps, which we, just last year, saw erected below the bridges along the Seine have now disappeared. There ARE complaints about people pissing in the streets (and even more complaints about the many, quite ...

Michael has a dream of exploring the catacombs below Paris - but his dream doesn't include standing in a long line of tourists waiting at the official entrance. He wants to find a secret manhole somewhere, which leads down to some of the 300 kilometers of labyrinthine tunnels, which lie below most of central Paris. People called cataphiles are actually exploring these labyrinths - but I have nightmares about him climbing down into slimy darkness and perhaps on his way back finding out that the manhole he entered had been closed shut from the outside. No way! Luckily he found another way to be a trespasser and explore  hidden parts of the city without going underground The Petite Ceinture (“little belt”) is a disused railway line which traces the 32-kilometer perimeter of Paris. It was built about 150 years ago and now long abandoned. Today most of the tracks are quite inaccessible and off limits, overgrown  and forgotten, ...

  This is how we do when we walk the streets of whichever place we're visiting: We choose a point of interest as our goal and then we stroll serendipitously towards it - looking behind corners, down alleys, inside courtyards - perhaps even wander so far off course, we never arrive to our original goal. This time our goal was the Ozenfant house - the first Parisian house built by famed architect Le Corbusier. The search for this house let us deep into 14 arrondissement, which - besides Tour de Montparnasse and the entrance to the catacombs - is probably not on the itinerary of many tourists. The 14th turned out to be a lovely place to wander around - the Parc Montsouris was so pretty on a sunny afternoon, with its lake and great lawns. We found the Ozenfant and I took in all the fantastic details - but just from the outside. The building is privately owned and not open for visitors. Right next to this modernistic masterpiece, we ventured down Square Mo...

For the umpteenth time,  we have returned to Paris. This time we've exchanged our house with a Parisian family living smack in the middle of my personal heaven: the garment district on the slopes of the Montmartre. I can every morning pop down to the shops and look through masses of rolls of beautiful silk, flowery pieces of cotton or just any pattern I like. I imagine myself making a dress, a silk pajama, a pair of trousers. All the things I didn’t make of the lots of fabric I bought last summer. As a bonus, my favorite Parisian consignment boutiques are just a few minutes away. The very nice Chinemachine in Rue de Martyrs ( www.chinemachinevintage.com ) being a favorite. I also visit the much more scrappy Guerrisol ( www.guerrisol.fr ) and Emmaüs boutiques ( www.emmaus-paris.fr ), where you can dig through mud and come up with pure gold Just the last few days, I have located a beautiful Cacharel shirt, a silk dress, a long green robe, some t-shirts and a lin...

Sometimes you don't have to travel the world to find adventures. Sometimes you can find them in your own back garden. We're back from Lyon and staying for a few days in our house in the Ardeche, where Michael always has wanted to do a trek up in the mountains just as we did when I was living in Greenland. With his birthday coming up, he made it his birthday wish to camp out and even though my broken knee forbids me to do actual rock climbing, we could always set up the tent on our small mountain terrace behind the house, overlooking the Mas river. The tent was an old thing which we had last used in the Paradise Valley outside of Nuuk and as it was almost ten years ago, we found it a little bit complicated to remember how to assemble it. Finally, it was done. Our food, the wine, and the water were carried down, and it was not a minute too soon. The thunderstorm that threatened to break loose all day, finally decided that it was time. I think it is the most wonderful fee...

Two days ago, we came back from Morocco. We landed in Lyon,  which we, during the years, have passed many times going to and from our house in the Ardeche. Every time we passed, it looked so lovely, spreading along the banks of the Rhone and the Saône - and this time, we decided to stay in the city for a few days and explore its wonders. With Bastille day and World cup final happening on two consecutive days, our stay has almost been one, long party. On the night of July 14, the sky above the Fourvière basilica explodes with the most fantastic fireworks and we sat together with thousands of Lyonnaise, on the banks of the Rhone river, gasping at the wonders above.  The next morning, we went to 'Les Halles Paul Bocuse', a wonderful food market named after the local, culinary giant, where I could let my inner foodie loose among stalls run by hand-picked food merchants of the region. We filled a bag with two beautifully crafted tarts, some pate, some bread...

We've now lived in Essaouira for more than a week and we feel a little bit sad about leaving. It IS a wonderful town, and we'll absolutely return. When we arrived, we found ourselves lost in the labyrinth of the old souks, but the medina is actually not that large and the big walls, the gates and the sea are great for giving you bearings. Now we walk through the alleys and take the narrow bypasses like old timers. You can see a lot of stuff about Essaouira in the guidebooks. The wast fortifications are exactly as beautiful and impressive as you can read  (or see on Game of Thrones or in the old Orson Welles version of Othello). Here  are some special tips we learned from a knowledgeable friend or had to experience ourselves Where to stay There are lots of riads inside the medina, but only a few with an actual view of the sea. We're staying in a place called Riad Dar Nor ( www.darnor.com ) just next to the city wall. Dar...

The last 24 hours we've experienced amazing contrasts. We woke up in our riad overlooking the sunbaked Saharan wastelands and - after packing our stuff - we drove by taxi for several hours towards the west through an endless desert. Underway we stopped at this surrealistic site - some goats defying gravity on top of an Argan tree. How did they climb up? And what were they actually doing up there? We'll never know. Now we're here - in the cool harbor city of Essaouira on the Atlantic coast, which some friends told us we just had to experience.  Coming from the furnace of the desert the coast feels almost cold. Here you have a 20-22 degrees Celsius climate all year round and a more or less constant breeze, locally known as 'The Alizee". The cool wind feels SO wonderful even though we have to put on our thermal jackets for the first time in many weeks. Essaouira has a bustling, vibrant medina surrounded by giant medieval-looking battlement...