How do you get your "Paris Fix" ....
 

I've been home only a few days and I'm already missing Paris! I've eaten all the chocolate in the house and now heading to the champagne with my French Cafe cd playing.

What do you do to get your "Paris Fix" at home?

I look at all my photographs from trips to Paris , listen to French music and plan the next trip!
Go to French movies, and eat French food...it sort of works :)

And tell everybody at work about Paris and the future trip to it ;)

As above: organize the photo album, schedule a dinner with French food and make people look at the album :), make notes about what you did and didn't do, and plan the next trip

well, mine is not Paris but France. We e-mail alot but Paris is here in what I can see(film, goods, with so many shops who appreciate the goods out of Paris.

Go to New Orleans and speak French with the waiters! We found a little restaurant with a tiny vine-covered courtyard off the bar. And a bartender who fancies Edith Piaf CD's!

Or, go to Montreal and wander around and listen to people speaking French and pretend :)
elaine, how many hours til you leave?

Immediately start planing my next trip. After my last trip (October)I realized I'd have to go at least once a year so I've signed up for French lessons at the Alliance Francaise- first class tomorrow night! I also try to eat at LaBonne Soupe (NYC) at least once a month. I always buy mustard and honey while in Paris and enjoy it often once I'm back home. And I daydream an awful lot!

I bought tons of soap, shampoo and chocolate while in Paris so throughout the day there is always a reminder.

==Mike

It ought to be possible to get French radio stations on the internet, not that I've ever tried..?

I have been known to listen to the BBC on the internet when abroad and homesick.

I watch French tv - news, some talk shows (presented by some tres sexy French men), makes me feel a bit like I'm there now.
Read "Le Monde" on the internet.
Take private lessons twice a month.
Pick up French baroque operas whenever they broadcast them on tv and hope that one day I'll get to experience one of them live at the Garnier.
Plan my next trip, which will take place in just over 3 months. Yes!

We always have a trip to Paris on the horizon and, when I am in need of a fix, I work on the next trip. When really desperate, we go to Patisserie Poupon in Georgetown, DC, about 3 blocks from home and have a petite dejuner Francais and buy some macarons to take home.

Easy--buy a plane ticket. I'm leaving Saturday. :-))

"Easy--buy a plane ticket. I'm leaving Saturday."

I agree. The best way not to go cold turkey.

I go to www.abcparislive.com and up pops the Eiffel Tower. Then I click on Outdoor sights and click on the first picture. I can see what the weather is and watch the lights sparkle on the Tower every hour starting at 11:00 AM or 12 noon my time. I leave it on my computer all day at work and flip over to it. That's my main "fix". And of course reading the posts of others about Paris.

We talk about all the things we did while we were there, Laugh at the things we did wrong, but most of all
we know we're going back in may so we're planning our return and that makes us Smile.

Books.. books and books.. movies when I can get them...Le Journal newscast on PBS at 6:00 p.m. I cook. Webcams are terrific. Get "France" magazine delivered. Get Adrian Leeds newletter everyday.. and of course, "here". THEN I daydream.

SuzieC: What is Adrian Leeds newsletter?

I post my stuff on Virtual Tourist (www.virtualtourist.com/beatchick) and watch French movies (I drive my kids NUTS! - &quot;oh can't we watch <u>Am&eacute;lie</u> again?&quot;, I talk about it with friends, I help people with travel plans.

Incidentally, Sally Fowler &amp; I are among the Top 5 Paris tipsters on Virtual Tourist! Sally is NUMBER 2!! You all should go look at &amp; rate her stuff to boost her to #1.
www.virtualtourist.com/shrimp56

You can see the Top 5 list here:
http://www.virtualtourist.com/vt/18308/

Go Sally!!

this is where I Adrian's stuff

http://www.parlerparis.com/

I listen to French radio stations while sitting at the computer. The CD player next to my bed has a stack of CDs I have bought in Paris featuring musicians I heard there as well as other French music. In the car I've been listening to my own French Cafe CD from Putumayo (is that the one you have, Beach Girl?) and to CDs of Paris Combo and Sanseverino, to which that Putumayo compilation introduced me.

I subscribe to several French home decorating magazines. The table in the kitchen is covered with pottery I bought in Paris. The whole kitchen was designed around my grandmother's collection of Quimper faience, and I have been adding other types of French vintage kitchen ware from flea markets in Paris.

My children think I am obsessed.

Hi Nikki,
Yes, I have that cd, too! Its fun. Also, Paris Combo. Have another...Carla Bruni..she's really good.

Love the live webcam and radio stations! How fun.

There is a publication called &quot;Paris Notes&quot;, a monthly newsletter that a friend passed on to us before we left. (Had an article on Paris cabarets.) May have to subscribe to this one.

SuzieC: Thanks for the info.

Seek out the best croissants, cheese shops, wine stores in the area.

Read French novels with thumb in dictionary.

Take French classes.

Go to good French restaurants. Embarrass my children by trying to speak French with waiters, some of whom are not French and do not speak French.

Speak French with anyone who will tolerate it. (I find our dog does a reasonably good job at this.)

Bathe with French soap.

Join French library.

Check frequent flyer miles accumulated at Air France.

BeachGirl247

I, too, have only been home for a few short days and they seem oh too long. I long to go back to Paris as soon as possible. But, I have to wait until the summer, at least, to save up some more:)
I listen to French news on the morning radio (Radio France International), French CDs in the car, read Le Monde online, and definately buy all of the French wine (preferably pomerol) I can find!! Vive la France.

It was mostly my child going through Parisian withdrawals last year so I bought a crepe maker and make her favorite nutella-and-banana concoction. Mine don't taste quite as good as the street vendors'in Paris, though, so we are going back five weeks from yesterday (but who's counting)!

I also read Leeds' daily emails and my subscription to BonjourParis (weekly) and my Paris email group; I check the web cameras daily (love watching the cars drive over the Seine); look at my own photos and others; check for internet used books I might not already own; and continue my research for the next trip (hopefully the end of this March/early April).

I bought a calendar of Paris at the Louvre which sits on my desk at work. My screensaver is a montage of photos from our last trip. I read about other people going on Fodors. I suffer. The good news is we are going back in March, YEA!!! Do you have people who when they hear you are going to Paris say 'but didn't you go there last year?'

1. Signed up for the paris insights free quarterly newsletter.

2. Signed up, thanks to advice on this board, for &quot;French word a day&quot; e-mailed French lesson.

3. Watch French TV -- abundant here in Canada

4. Started several conversations with French people, on a recent trip to Virginia -- who knew they were so numerous there!?!?

5. Spend a good bit of my weekly one-on-one workplace French instruction in unauthorized talk about travel plans -- my French teacher is a Quebecer who recently visited Brittany for the first time and at Christmas I gave her a fantastic 1950s French train poster -- &quot;Take the SNCF to Brittany&quot;

Corilo,

Were you there for New Year's Eve?
If so, what did you do?
We had a very nice dinner @ La Truffiere. Then, stuck in traffic going from the 5th trying to get to the 16th. Took 2.5 hours!!!!

Oh goodness, I haven't even been home from Paris 24 hours and already I've broken into the French wine I brought home (that was last night when I got off the plane, even though it was 4 am French time and I felt like a lush drinking in the morning), had croissants for breakfast spread with French jam, bought 10 pounds of supersized onions this afternoon so I can make French onion soup tonight, and enjoyed a pot of French tea...and I don't want to even tell you about all the websites I hit looking for ideas for the NEXT trip, as I listened to Edith Piaf songs on my CD player!

Nothing beats listening to the yearly, &quot;Les Enfoires&quot; for today's France in music.
Les Enfoires was started by the late actor, Coluche for the restaurants of the Heart, all the proceeds go to feed and clothe the homeless and all the entertainers tour France in Jan-Feb to perform for free. Jonny Haliday, Jane Birkin, Patricia Kaas, Francis Cabrel, Patrick Fiori, Pascal Obispo, Axelle Red, Helene Segera,Vanessa Paradis and TOO MANY others to mention but if you know todays French Pop you will know what a terrific set these are.

I go to this Web site:
http://photos.pagesjaunes.fr/

It has clickable maps of Paris and a few other cities. You can click on any street in the city, and see photographs of the street. There are also arrows that, when clicked, let you take a walk down the street.

Nikki - at the risk of sounding ignorant - how do you listen to French radio stations from your computer? I would love to do this!

cherifm.fr, chantefrance.fr...and let's see what nikki has

Cigalechanta: Thanks for the two websites. However, I went into both and didn't manage to come up with music. Can you elaborate a bit? I don't speak french. Thanks.

charlie, lets start with cheri
when you bring the site up, in the upper rt side click on play, a box comes down, click on the horn and the play, I must do that a few times myself to understand that part.Once you get it going the box has an option on the lower right. I click on that because it tells me who is performing and the title in French so I use my dictionary.
I hope I am making this clear otherwise...WAAAAaaaaaa!!!

Chantefrance....click on radio en ligne, a box will come up(on my) lft side and you'll see what to click on there too.

By flying there whenever I can.