Photo of the Day (12/20/06)

by Adrienne Wilson on


Still searching for the perfect stocking stuffer for your loved one? Well, if you’re in Paris for the holidays you might want to check in with this dude selling many mini Eiffel Tower. He seems to have several and no real-takers. Maybe he’s just getting started with his business day. Taken by localsurfer in Paris with some type of Lomo cam (Holga?), I’d say he did a good job capturing the guy’s boredom or lack of interest while on the job.

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Planespotting in Saint Martin

by Justin Glow on

Aside from being one of the smallest islands divided among two nations (France and Netherlands), Saint Martin is a Caribbean hotspot known for its nightlife, exotic hotels, nude beaches, and planespotting population. Wait — one of those doesn’t quite fit. Planespotting?

Maho Beach — located on the western coast of Saint Martin — is situated at the end of the main runway at Princess Juliana International Airport, and planespotters and tourists alike flock to this thin strip of sand to get up close and personal with a jumbo jet in midair.

YouTube has a host of amateur videos, and I’ve scoured through the lot to find the cream of the crop. Have a look, after the jump:

Here’s a 747-400 flying over Maho Beach — it almost seems that anyone with a decent vertical leap could grab onto the wheel for a free ride to the airport.
Here’s that same plane from a different prospective.
…and a shot of some tourists getting sandblasted by the jetwash.
Here’s a view from the cockpit on arrival – it gives you a good idea of just how close the runway is to the beach. Note: there’s a naked mannequin at the end of this one, which may be NSFW.

Brush Shoulders with the Hoi Polloi?

by Iva Skoch on

If the Holiday Inn near Disney World just won’t cut it this year, perhaps you can save up for a real hotel treat. The French Riviera beckons with some of the best real estate and hotel luxury in the world. The place to go is the Hotel du Cap Eden Roc.

Opened in 1870, over the years, this grand hotel near Cannes has hosted kings, presidents, and stars too numerous to mention, and even gangsters (in fact, chambermaids were troubled to follow the hotel’s dust-everything policy when it came to guests’ firearms, according to Julian Allason of the Financial Times). The sea-side swimming pool was such an attraction that it drew the likes of Charlie Chaplin and George Bernard Shaw, back in 1914. The hotel was the inspiration for the setting of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night.

Starting at a mere $600 USD a night (in the off-season, of course), you can indulge yourself in luxury. The 22-acre site has woods, two hotels, and villas situated on a small cape, sticking out into the Mediterranean. Amenities include water taxies out to your yacht, valet parking for your speedboat, magicians to entertain your children, spa treatments, and helicopter transportation to your private jet at the nearby Cannes airfield.

But you have some time to save up: the hotel opens for the season on April 6. Oh, and be sure to check out the great website to see the alphabetical list of celebrity guests.

Word for the Travel Wise (11/28/06)

by Adrienne Wilson on

No real rhyme or reason for picking today’s word other than I stumbled upon it over at the BBC in their cool French section. It was part of a longer phrase, but I think this one word is enough for now.

Today’s word is a French word used in France:

cafard – cockroach

French is the third largest Romance language in the world in terms of native speakers according to the Wikipedia and is the official language of 29 countries. There are a number of places to learn French abroad which include Canada and Switzerland in addition to France. Amerispan offers immersion programs in all three of the countries and more info can be found by clicking here. Search other study abroad programs at some of these sites here: Coeur de France, Accord French Language School, and Transitions Abroad to name only a few. Swing over to My Language Exchange where you are sure to find someone willing to exchange their lingo skills for some of your own. Free online sources for learning French include France-Pub, French Assistant, and the BBC Languages.

Past French words: confiture, difficile, frottis, ma reum (mère), pensées, vélo, croire, neige

Dumping the Trash in Paris…

by Adrienne Wilson on

Whenever I’ve been abroad I’ve always liked to watch what the locals were doing, their trends and how they went about their workdays. It always seemed to me as if the Spanish retail girl in Barcelona carried on with her work much differently than the ones I’d seen in Miami, Los Angeles or even St. Louis. It always felt as though as a whole the people were working to pay off different things or like everyone was saving for a big two-year backpacking excursion somewhere. Totally unrealistic, right, but I’m sure there is some truth in the statement. I mean, I bet they aren’t paying back hordes of credit card debit or Sallie Mae student loans. Let me not focus on retail alone though, I feel this way about many professions abroad. People just seem to carry on so differently and really where I’m trying to go with my musings is to this NPR piece on dumping the trash in Paris.

To be more precise, the unemployment rate is higher than normal and with a garbage collector’s position, citizens can receive security, full benefits, a pension and a relatively nice paycheck from the government job. There are so many people applying now that the city has even instituted a written-exam. So I guess anyone dreaming of moving to Paris without a plan or without any real knowledge of what the employment trends may be, might want to take a listen to the piece. Sure – Paris is glamorous and all, but there is something about working with the public’s trash that doesn’t thrill me so much.