NOTE: THESE POSTS WERE FILED TO MY TORONTO STAR BLOG IN DECEMBER 2010. AIX-EN-PROVENCE, FRANCE – Walking into town from my hotel it didn’t look like much. But once I got past the garish kiddie rides that have taken over the main square here for Christmas (they did the same thing in Paris at the Bastille, which is another matter entirely) I was suddenly in a charming, ancient city. Aix was founded by the Romans back in 122 B.C. after a convincing military victory over local Ligurian tribes, and it’s filled with lovely squares and limestone buildings in various Provencal shades of Read more
Europe
We haven’t heard as much about it as you might think, given that Canada and the U.S. are playing on Saturday in Toronto for a berth, but the Rugby World Cup will be in England and Wales in two years time. And it promises to be a massive show. Sure, the Super Bowl is big. Ditto for the Stanley Cup and the Pan Am Games, which will be in Toronto in 2015 in case you forgot and will have more athletes than a Winter Olympics. But the Rugby World Cup is said to have the third largest global audience of Read more
This is from a trip I took to London in the winter of 2009, partly to show how cheap it can be in the off-season… LONDON – Last time I was here it was summer and, oh, about 35 degrees Celsius. Today, when my Air Canada flight touched down after some really heavy turbulence (think monster drops that had even the flight attendants gasping for air) it was 2 degrees. With several inches of snow on the ground. I’m normally not one to go for the cold, but this town is far, far better in the snow than in the Read more
ZURICH – This is a town that doesn’t get enough respect. Yeah, there are banks and old hotels and stodgy folks. Same in New York and Toronto. There’s also a wild part of town, West Zurich, where they’ve taken old industrial buildings and turned them into cool nightclubs. You’ll find scantily dressed ladies parading about various parts of town trying to drum up business. On my last visit, I saw a black van that represented a clothing company and had the words “Enjoy your fucking shirt” scrawled across the back. Maybe 10 years ago, I was in town for the Read more
This post is from a great visit in December, 2010… PARIS – It wasn’t what I expected. And I couldn’t have been happier. When someone from the French tourism office in Canada suggested I take in a jazz brunch on Sunday, I had pictures of a bunch of guys Woody Allen’s age bopping on the clarinet in front of a well-heeled group of visitors at a semi-swanky hotel room. Or something like that. Instead, when I arrived at a place near the Marais district called Le Reservoir, I was mildly surprised – in the best possible way – to find Read more
