Take this shortcut to simplify your holiday shopping. As the holidays approach, Bonjour Paris is hand selecting a collection of Paris-related books, gifts, and travel gadgets and showcasing them in our Amazon affiliate store.

If travel is in your holiday plans, you'll find the best hotel deals on Booking.com.

We are also adding more specials to the Bonjour Paris Marketplace.

Please free free to comment and recommend additions to our lists.

Why wait for Sunday to Brunch?

This is the question Hotel de Crillon ask, boldly launching “Le Brunch du Samedi”. “The concept came to us because our Sunday brunches are so successful, but we often had clients popping in on a Saturday after a hard morning shopping on the Faubourg, who were really hungry and wanted something light and delicious to give them courage to continue to shop 'til they drop”, explains Elodie Tavares, the de Crillon's press manager.

Now is the time not just for attending to everyone else’s Christmas list, but for giving some thought to preparing your own. Who knows, with an artful hint or two, you might actually receive some of your favorite wines!

The phrase to “hit the ground running” is used so loosely now that one can forget its derivation; it referred originally to cowboys dodging bullets in the Wild West and only later to what we automatically think of now - Airborne troops landing and preparing to get going fast – shades of Normandy and St Mere Eglise.

It’s almost Christmas, and Paris looks more festive than ever. If there’s a recession, it’s hard to tell based on the number of people walking up the Avenue des Champs-Élysée. France’s Christmas markets are some of the most famous in the world. If you are in Paris during the holidays, do save enough time to stop in churches and savor one of the most beautiful cities in the world dressed in its Christmas best.

A few weeks ago, Monday October 5th to be exact, the Wall Street Journal published an intriguing article by Geoffrey A. Fowler and Joseph De Avila with an even more intriguing title “On the Internet, everyone’s a critic but not everyone is critical."

In essence, it turns out that despite the reputation the Internet has for nastiness, most critiques are bland or mildly positive, and few are hard-hitting. The Journal article says the average review is a 4.3 stars/5. And, more amazing, website overseers tend to take down negative reviews or comments, even if civil and politely stated.

Mysteriously, Montparnasse, that ever-vibrant quarter full of legendary cafés, bars and brasseries, has not been a destination for tea. Now with the very welcome arrival of the charming Chez Charlotte salon du thé in the hip new Hotel des Academies et des Arts, locals and visitors can pop in off the busy boulevards and settle in to comfortable couches to savor selected macarons from macaron-master Pierre Hermé and loose-leaf teas from Palais des Thés. This is a savvy minimalist pairing. No less a master chef than Fernand Adria has declared Pierre Hermé’s macarons to be “perfection”. Palais des Thés is known for sourcing quality teas from growers that are environmentally sensitive.

Imagine a father who looked forward his whole life to the day when he’d have grandchildren of his very own. And then imagine that father having a daughter so headstrong and selfish that she decides she’d rather live thousands of miles away, in some country that speaks a tricky foreign language and that he’d have to travel 16 hours to reach.

For about six months my wife has been whining: I want an iPhone. This after various people had shown her the niceties of the various applications on their own personal smart phones. Like Constellation, permitting you to point the iPhone to the sky and getting a detailed read on various constellations and planets. Or the one which gives you the most popular songs of any year for the past one hundred. Go to the iPhone Apps Store on line to wallow in the esoterica of possibility.

I’ve just discovered one of the most unusual contemporary art galleries in Paris and one that is only open by private invitation. Commissioned by Jean-Marc Dimanche, from architect team XY (Xavier Esselinck and Yves Bour), the Villa des Ombelles is a seven-story town house in the « Petit Montrouge » quarter of Paris, bordering the Parc Montsouris in the 14th arrondissement.

We usually make at least one trip a year, and sometimes two, from our house in the Southwest of France to the Basque country. We like seeing the peppers hanging in front of the houses in Espelette in France and we enjoy the great restaurants in San Sebastian.

But this year we found we could visit a Basque area in our own country as part of a six-week, 10,000-mile drive around the United States.

Paris is for me an addiction. I haven’t been to Paris in four months, and I needed a fix, even though my business and bank account won’t permit one of my impulsive weekend trips. I found that fix recently when I read Paris Insights – An Anthology by Tom Reeves, a beautifully illustrated compilation of many of the best stories from the “Paris Insights” newsletter published over the last ten years by Discover Paris!

“We love the buzz in the revamped Thoumieux” is the word among foodie afficionados who rush to be first to test a new address. And Thoumieux, on the Left Bank within site of Eiffel's Tower, has history. Le tout Paris has always held this classic brasserie in high esteem since Martial Thoumieux opened the heavy doors in 1923. His solid bistro cuisine de Corréze, showcased duck foie gras terrine, pan fried dover-sole filet, grilled sardines, cassoulet, steak and crème brulée and kept the bums on the shiny red banquettes.

For those who have never been to Pont-Aven in Brittany, I suggest that you add it to your next France holiday. A trip to the peaceful ‘valley of willows’ is rewarding not only for the sheer beauty of the place but because it was in Pont-Aven that a whole art movement began under the auspices of Paul Gauguin. So it is true that Pont-Aven defines the bond between Brittany and painting.

Just when I felt my obsession with The Elegance of the Hedgehog subsiding, I found myself in Paris, in search of 7, rue de Grenelle, the hotel particuliere where the story takes place. Adding to my urgency to find that residence: en route to Paris I had read Gourmet Rhapsody, Muriel Barbery’s prequel to Hedgehog, which is set in the same place.

A major exhibition at the Grand Palais through January 4 displays Renoir’s later work and demonstrates his influence on Picasso, Matisse, Bonnard and other early modernists. In 2010 the show travels to Los Angeles and Philadelphia, offering viewers an extraordinary opportunity to better understand the artist poet Apollinaire called “the greatest living painter.”

As cuisine writers and judges, we were invited to Bocuse d'Or, which has presented gourmet creations like a haute couture fashion show for over 20 years. This prestigious biennial international cooking competition challenges 24 chefs from around the world to create two perfect dishes.

When Clint Eastwood was dubbed Commandeur de l'ordre de la Légion d'Honneur by President Nicholas Sarkozy at the Elysées Palace last week, there was a slew of celebs from the world of cinema to celebrate with him. Eastwood returned to Paris on the 28 November for the annual glittering Bal des Debutantes at the Hotel de Crillon, where his 16-year old daughter Francesca (from his marriage to Francis Fisher) was presented to society.

Traveling is a challenge no matter how you approach it or like it. Travel barges in on your personal space, starting at the airport. It doesn’t end there. You can tell a lot about a culture by how people interact and how much distance they give one another. Unless Americans are forced into sardine situations, they tend not to stand on top of one another. As friendly as people in the U.S. tend to be, by telling one another too much too soon, strangers rarely touch one another. In other countries, the protocol is very different.