This is not a happy development since we’re three weeks from our annual Thanksgiving trip to Paris. Our friends in Paris say that people are on edge given this warning and the reaction in the streets to the change in the retirement age.

PARIS — Osama bin Laden warned France in an audiotape broadcast by Al Jazeera television on Wednesday that it would face killings and kidnappings if it did not withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

He also justified the kidnapping of five French citizens in Niger last month, saying that France mistreated its Muslims.

“The equation is very clear and simple: as you kill, you will be killed; as you take others hostages, you will be taken hostages; as you waste our security we will waste your security,” Mr. bin Laden said.

[From New Bin Laden Tape Warns France - NYTimes.com]

Sadly, in his threat, he equates banning veils for women with slitting the throats of aid workers in Niger. Scary times.I don’t know if that means to stay away from all métros and museums. It might be a moot point; with the strikes, there may not be much open anyway.

MSNBC reports that last year, American tourism was down 40% versus a decade ago. Worse, the Paris tourism office says 2009 traffic was down another 3.4% versus the prior year.

Surprisingly, while we only read of a double-dip recession, French tourism officials expect that Americans will be coming back “as the the U.S. economy improves. I have no doubt they are correct, but I don’t thing that will mean in 2011.

Americans remains the most frequent foreign visitors to Paris. We still see a lot of our countrymen in the streets, but maybe because we are right in the 6th most of the time near high-traffic areas. More striking are the number of Asian visitors, especially from China and India, which in itself is symbolic of where economic dynamism is these days.

American tourists expected to return to Paris

Are these the current postage rates in France?

Standard first-class letters (20g or less) and postcards within France cost €0.56; to continental European countries (from Scandinavia to Portugal), Baltic states, Greece, and the British Isles €0.70; to other European or Eurasian countries (Iceland, Russia, etc.), Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania (Australia, New Zealand) €0.85.

We will be in Paris next week. I can hardly stand the long times between being there, the place where I feel the most “at home.” Well, at home, because it’s all so familiar and doesn’t change like everything here does. Through a viewfinder of any type, it still looks like the black and white images from the first Truffaut movies I saw 30 years ago.

Good article here from today’s NYT on Paris in the movies. I don’t have a 16mm, but may bring a big Nikon for once, now that I’m not carrying little kids in my arms half the day.

“We’ll always have Paris,” Rick says to Ilsa at the end of “Casablanca,” and for movie lovers this is certainly true. Even as genre preferences shift and digital technology messes with our cinematic sense of place, and even among viewers allergic to subtitles or indifferent to the antique glories of the Nouvelle Vague, Paris is durable, indispensable, infinitely photographable.

…Paris is special. Its uniquely dense weave of narrow streets and broad boulevards — concentric rings reflecting state-of-the-art mid-19th-century urban planning superimposed on a medieval core, with barely a right angle or parallel line in sight — discloses an apparently limitless reservoir of perspectives and moods. The sun setting over the Seine; the swirl of traffic around the Place de la Concorde; the workaday neighborhoods on the eastern fringe of the Right Bank; the storied cafes and restaurants clustered around the Boulevard St.-Germain. Love, sophistication, eroticism, danger, class struggle, violence, tenderness, political intrigue — any effect, theme or motif you can contemplate is likely to have a Paris address.

[From Film - Movie Love for Paris, City of Klieg Lights - NYTimes.com]

To the dismay of everyone in the travel industry other than hotel executives, Gov. David Paterson of New York has signed legislation outlawing the rental of apartments in New York — which means primarily New York City — for periods of less than 30 days.

This is very bad news for family tourists everywhere who’ve recently discovered the joys of renting an apartment for the week, rather than a hotel room. As parents of two small children, I wouldn’t say that the availability of apartment rentals is the difference between going or not, but it is often the difference between having a good time versus a nightmare of four people crowded into an over-priced hotel. Not only do apartment rentals mean not paying for a lot of hotel amenities that go unused by families, they also provide a kitchen, which helps families stay away from hotel restaurants and the dreaded $10 glass of orange juice.

Sadly, this “crackdown” appears to be part of a trend, yet I don’t understand who is driving it. In Paris, some are making an argument that apartment rentals take real estate out of the market, therefore making it more unaffordable for locals. On the other hand, since apartments appear to be serving a need, wouldn’t a lot of these apartments turn into hotels anyway, following the same logic, especially since hotels would be charging twice the rate of an apartment rental?

Still, New York City, Maui and Paris will now be places where you can’t simply contact a real estate broker and rent an apartment for the week of your stay. Let’s all hope that this misguided effort eventually will be repealed through the political process.

From Frommer: New York limits apartment rentals to tourists MiamiHerald.com

We can only hope, a new “lobby” of owners will educate politicians on the error of their ways. And hopefully, fast, before they really crack down on what has become a very popular alternative for many vacationers, especially families.

What a difference a decade makes.

PARIS — France’s footballing fortunes were on top of the world 10 years ago, having added the European title to their world crown of 1998. On Tuesday in Bloemfontein it reached its chaotic and demoralising nadir.
A humiliating 2-1 defeat to South Africa, with a red card for young midfielder Yoann Gourcuff to rub salt into the wounds, sent Raymond Domeenech and his men scurrying for home with just one point and one goal from three games.
How that dramatic collapse happened – from the soaring heights of 2000 to the dismal depths of 2010 – will be subject of much soul-searching in French sporting circles over the next few weeks and months.

[From AFP: French football hits rock bottom]

But this is even worse:

Anelka à Domenech : “Va te faire enculer, sale fils de pute!”

Ce sont des mots à peine croyables. Selon L’Equipe, Nicolas Anelka aurait lourdement insulté Raymond Domenech à la mi-temps de France-Mexique.

Nicolas Anelka is a French footballer who plays as a striker for Chelsea in the English Premier League. Raymond Domenech is a retired French footballer and the current manager of the France national team.
France soccer is more soap opera than great ball these days.
I’ll be up early tomorrow and keeping fingers crossed for a US v. Algeria miracle.

Great. Just when I had stopped worrying about being fed horse meat.

PARIS: The traders sell an array of bush meat: monkey carcasses, smoked anteater, even preserved porcupine.

But it isn’t a jungle market in Africa – it’s the heart of Paris, where a new study has found more than five tonnes of bush meat slips through the city’s main airport each week.

Researchers suspect similar amounts are arriving in other European cities in an illegal trade raising concerns about diseases ranging from monkeypox to Ebola, and is another twist in the struggle to integrate a growing African immigrant population.

[From Monkey on menus in France]

I don’t think this is happening anywhere in the 6th though.

I always thought the death of the Concorde was vastly unfair. Though I know post 9/11 and a cratering air travel market didn’t help, the Concorde flew without incident for 30 years before tarmac debris brought the first one down.

The Concorde to me, as to many others, was more than just a very fast plane. It was a combination of fantasy, luxury, and tech triumph. It also was an aging symbol of American barriers to free trade. The SST was banned from inter-continental flights across the US based on concerns for sonic booms (though promises were made not to fly at supersonic speeds).

I was lucky enough to fly on the Concorde over a Christmas holiday and the flight was everything I imagined. It was a rarefied world where only top shelf champagne and caviar were served. The cramped seats were mostly filled with time-obsessed executives who needed to buy the extra hours at whatever cost. I was lucky to be on vacation, on home leave from an international assignment, and happy to soak up all the luxurious attention.

I hope that despite the claim that they only want to see the Concorde roll on it’s own power on the Le Bourget tarmac, that someone has a plan to get the bird back in the air. It’s nice to think that technological marvels of the space age could still come back, and in finding the past, we could sew the seeds to a more hopeful future.

LE BOURGET, France — A French aeronautics association Saturday examined the engines of a Concorde passenger jet at an air museum outside Paris to determine if they could be used again.

“The objective is not to get it (Concorde) to fly again but to get the engines working again, hoping one day to see it taxi on the tarmac for the pleasure of visitors to the museum,” said Frederic Pinlet, head of Olympus 593, named after the Rolls Royce/Snecma engines used on the aircraft.

[From AFP: French air enthusiasts hope to restart Concorde engines]

Bad timing if you have reservations this week.

[From Strike to disrupt French air traffic this week | Business News | Reuters]

We haven’t gotten any shots out here in far-flung San Francisco, so we’ve been waiting anxiously for a wave of swinish flu to break over our shores. So far, lot’s of other childhood coughs and sniffles, but no porcine fevers. However, to be on the safe side, and be four more defense links in the chain, I’d love to get us all innoculated. I doubt France is selling these through Amazon though.

France wants to sell millions of surplus flu shots
PARIS
Sun Jan 3, 2010

PARIS (Reuters) – France is looking to sell millions of surplus vaccines for the H1N1 flu strain after ordering many more shots than it actually needed, officials said on Sunday.

[From France wants to sell millions of surplus flu shots | Reuters]