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Category / Nostalgia

Working in the Paris Fashion Industry 100 Years Ago

The industry’s most prestigious fashion houses are currently celebrating haute couture week, but for the fashion world a century ago, every week was haute couture week. During the Belle Epoque, there was no such thing as an off-the-rack dress and clothes shopping was a luxury reserved for the wealthy elite. Fashion was made by hand from start…

A Secret Living Museum in Paris

This is the kind of place where you can find the original wall panels from Coco Chanel’s living room, rescued from a demolished Parisian mansion she once lived in. Down a corridor, the 200 year-old components of an entire room designed for Napoleon are casually stockpiled like pieces of an 18th century puzzle waiting to…

You Don’t Have to Bring your Own Boules to Play Pétanque in Paris – But it Helps

No matter how long you’ve been in France, there will be few other moments in your life that feel both as culturally significant and stressful as your first ever game of pétanque. The second the rain clouds clear over France in early spring, you can bet a boule will be thrown. There are a handful…

What’s Left of a Cartel Cop’s Palace Playground

If you look up the definition of “police corruption” in the dictionary, there should really be a photograph of Arturo “El Negro” Durazo Moreno, the infamous Chief of Police in Mexico City, from 1976 to 1982. While his official job earned him less than $1,000 a month, Durazo made a fortune off the cocaine drug trade and…

Honeymooning Around the Earth in an Amphibious Jeep

My heroes are up there with the Amelia Earharts, Aloha Wonderwells, Ernest Hemingways, and the Jacques Cousteaus of this world; names that conjure up the romance of adventure and inspire us to take risks in an age where travel has been made too easy. But in all my travel reading, I’d never heard of the…

Don’t be a Tourist, Episode 3: Fencing and Frogs

Forget Hemingway. I’ve fallen for a chivalrous musketeer in Saint Germain! In a brand new episode of our web series “Don’t be a Tourist”, we’ll discover a time-capsule fencing club wherein I develop a crush on my charming fencing master, followed by a culinary joy ride into the world of frogs legs. It doesn’t get any…

Escape to Sarah Bernhardt’s Seaside Fortress

This weekend, let’s escape to the seaside paradise of Morbihan, France, to peak inside the 19th century fortress that belonged to the eccentric, inimitable Sarah Bernhardt. As an actor, she was truly one of the first global superstars, and it was her flair for blurring the lines between performance and reality that made her an…

Vacationing at the West’s Smallest Ghost Town

Is luck just another word for good timing? It is for the town of Gold Point. Under the endless stretch of sky in Esmerelda County, Nevada, at the gateway of Death Valley, the little ghost town sleeps with dreams of bygone glory. Of chattering saloon life and gold dusted guns. Once upon a time –…

A Time Traveler’s Guide to Amsterdam

Most people know Amsterdam as the city of legal weed and the Red Light district. But that’s not all – or the most interesting – that Amsterdam has to offer. Amsterdam’s historic city center houses many old buildings – most of which have been around for many centuries – rebuilt and repurposed to fit the needs and preferences of each…

Back to School Fashion circa 1939

No matter how many years have past since I graduated, when September 1st rolls around, it always feels like the first day back to school again. Today has been a struggle settling back into the office so I thought I’d ease myself back in, stick to my comfort zone and dive into the good old…

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