It’s not too early to start staking out your spot for the triumphant arrival of the Tour de France in Paris. This year (2008), the Tour de France cyclists will zoom along the Champs Elysees, do their final circle round the Arc de Triomphe on Sunday, July 27th.

If you plan on being in town for that Sunday, you may want to take an early stroll down the Champs Elysees to choose among the innumerable cafes ranging from burger joints to ornate tea salons, but sentimentally speaking, I’d be hard put to go anyplace other than the Publicis Drugstore, 133 Avenue des Champs Elysees. That’s the place where we first saw the Tour de France tear up the pavement.

Not only that, but the Publicis Drugstore is perfectly situated at the corner of the Champs Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe so you do get a great vantage point.

There are other cafes along the Champs that have a more time-honored reputation such as Fouquet’s or La Duree, but ‘Le Drugstore’ holds a particular place in my heart - as being one of the few places on the Champs where as a poor student, I could afford to splurge on a ‘Salade caifornienne’. Even back then ‘Le Drugstore’ was a stylish place to wander about on a Friday or Saturday night.

Still, to this day, I don’t know how we managed to find a table to watch the Tour de France several years ago, but I think we ended up standing on tip-toe.

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World Heritage Sites normally conjure of images of jaw-dropping natural beauty - or architectural feats like the Taj Mahal and the Egyptian pyramids wrought by thousands of anonymous hands, yet, now and then, personal excellence gets recognition.

Certainly Sebastien Le Prestre, Seigneur de Vauban, King Louis XIV’s Marshal of France, brilliant tactician and royal military engineer is a name recognized by many who’ve visited the French northern coastline. His fortifications are easy to recognize once you’ve caught onto his star pattern formations. (You can even see the similar star pattern in Quebec City’s citadel - whose layout was approved by Vauban).

One of the reasons Vauban was considered the best man to rebuild the fortifications of almost 300 cities throughout France was his equally remarkable ability to break through a city’s defenses. He had numerous occasions (56 sieges) to prove his worth in battles where his attack strategies had good results.

Just as he sought out the weakest points in a city’s fortifications when he attacked, likewise, he optimized every building device in his defense constructions to create a vantage point that ‘had no blind spots’. Often he would use the natural coastline’s topography as part of his fortification plans.



One of my favorite places to admire Vauban’s engineering skill is along the coastline of the Normandy fishing port St. Vaast-la-Hougue. Thanks to friends, France and Toby Fleming, who introduced us to St. Vaast, we’ve returned many times. This town is famous, not only for tasty oysters, but also for huge naval battle, The Battle of Barfleur and La Hougue, 1692, and the remaining Vauban fortifications which nowadays make for a great seaside ramble. It’s also one of the 12 locations chosen to be recognized by Unesco as part of the World Heritage site honoring Vauban.

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Can I really afford to be shopping for souvenirs? Of course you can’t. But, on the other hand, how can you go back home, stare your friends in the face, and say, “Yeah, I was in Paris, I had a really great time - and, by the way did you get the postcard I mailed you from CDG? No, that won’t do. But even if your budget for souvenirs is severely limited, a little creative research will find some amazingly cool items available for under 20 Euros.

Coloring Books - Not Just kid stuff

Okay you dragged the kids through the Louvre. The only fair thing to do now is buy a coloring book so they can draw a mustache on Mona. But here’s the scoop. Coloring books are no longer just for kids. In fact, you may decide to stash your souvenir coloring book away in a drawer - because they look far too good to be scribbled upon. Buy one for your kids and one for you.

L’Art a Colorier by Anne Weiss

Price: 5.95 Euros

Starck Crazy

Who says you have to be rich to have a Philippe Starck designed living room? All you need for inspiration is a fly inhabiting your minimalist furniture free apartment. That’s what must have put a bee in Starck’s bonnet when he came up with this super design for a very affordable and USEFUL Paris souvenir:

A fly swatter.

Le Publicis Drugstore

Price: 9 Euros

(Design Lovers July 18-Aubust 28, 2008)

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Could this be a crowd pulling addition to Cologne’s reputation as an art city? The Ford factory in Cologne has metamorphosised into the Love Factory with a colourful paint job to celebrate the launch of the new Fiesta.

The Love Factory, Cologne

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I’ve eaten lunch many times over the last few years at The Grange Restaurant, 35 High St, North Berwick tel 01820 893344.   The three course lunch menu costs ВЈ9.95.  The dishes are freshly prepared using local produce. It’s a delicious lunch at a very reasonable price.

There’s always a good choice on the lunch menu with at least four dishes for each course. Last time I was there I had the broccoli and Stilton soup as a starter, monk fish as a main course and chocolate torte to finish.  The food is beautifully presented and the staff are charming.

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Very popular with local tourists, but yet to make it onto the wider tourist radar, Bojnice Castle in western Slovakia is the kind of place where you just have to take dozens of photographs.

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Has travel insurances gone bananas? Well Quotebanana.co.uk appear to think that a zany name is going to attract buyers of travel insurance with a strapline of “Don’t monkey around, pick the best of the bunch”. I hesitate to call Quotebanana a price comparison site as it predominately features insurance companies which are part of the AA group of companies. However I decided to give it a go for annual travel insurance in Europe for a couple. The cheapest quote of ВЈ59.10 was with Only Insurance.

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Having just booked some of my autumn holidays and enjoying Karen’s review on holiday.co.uk, I just realised that my preferred airline ticketing website is probably a bit obscure to many of our readers. Having lived in the Netherlands for many years, I have picked up a trick or two from the locals about getting a deal, and the website Cheaptickets.nl was probably one of the best tips I took with me to Edinburgh. Lucky for you, the website is now available in English but with the same great fares as before. Keep in mind, fares are quoted in Euros so be mind full of the ever-fluctuating currency rates, as noted in Karen’s recent post about the drop in the value of sterling against the Euro encouraging more Eurolanders to visit the UK

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If you’re taking your own car to mainland Europe this Summer you may be asking yourself if you should purchase European car breakdown cover. It’s hard to decide if you should buy breakdown cover but you have to weigh up the reliability of the your car, against the cost of the cover and what it might cost if you did break down on holiday.

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I did a double take today when I was writing about the current Ryanir ВЈ2 flights to Ireland promotion, I was checking in the price and availability of these flights when I noticed that Ryanair are now charging a ВЈ4 handling charge per flight for both credit and debit cards. I thought that it sounded pretty steep, especially the debit card fee, as I was sure it was usually significantly lower than the debit card charge. I referred back to a post I’d written on June 7 2008 about Ryanair’s free flights and sure enough on that date the debit card fee was ВЈ1.20 and the credit card fee ВЈ3.20. That’s a whopping increase of ВЈ2.80. or more than tripling, per flight if you pay by debit card.

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