Crêpes are a favorite French treat throughout the world, but eating one hot out of the pan in France is a unique experience.  Crêpes themselves can be found at small stalls and restaurants throughout France, so you’ll have no trouble enjoying the specialty while you’re traveling through the country.

I am, if nothing else, a food [...]

July and August are peak season for beach-goers in France. The beaches may be a bit more crowded at this time of year, but you couldn’t have better weather for enjoying the French Riviera.

Vocabulary • Shopping For The Beach • Warnings and Signage
France is framed by two main coast lines (as well [...]

Or, you know, le Tour de Belgique (Belgium) and Hollande (Hollande).
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
The 2010 Route
The tour route varies from year to year, and although most of it takes place in France, the cyclists will start in the Netherlands this time around. After the Prologue [...]

In the States, May Day means classrooms full of elementary school students simultaneously weaving paper baskets, constructing tissue-paper flowers to put inside, and (after school) placing the baskets on a doorstep, ringing the doorbell, and running away while leaving behind the home-made surprise.
This tradition of flower-giving began in France as a way of marking the [...]

I know, I know, April Fools‘ Day was last week, but the French version is just too funny not to mention.
In France, April Fools’ Day is known as poisson d’avril, or the fish of April.
Where we’re more apt to employ whoopi cushions and plastic spiders, French youth have a different tradition: schoolchildren will stick a [...]

quoi [Audio clip: view full post to listen]

rel. pronoun, French

what
which

int. adv., French

what

interjection, French

you know
like (informal)

Now that you’ve learned that quoi means what, I’m going to totally through a wrench in the spokes.  In does mean what in sentences like:
Tu fais quoi ce week-end? - What are you doing this weekend? [Audio clip: view full post [...]

LES RUES DE PARIS: PARTIE TROIS – THE STREETS OF PARIS: PART THREE   [Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Well, I made Part One and Part Two, so why not round it off with Part Three?  There’s always some tidbit of information that I can’t fit into a given lesson, and there’s usually [...]

em>”Avec ceux-ci?” [a-v?k' sø-si’]
“With these?”
This is a favorite phrase uttered by pâtisserie [pastry shop] employees all over France. Even if you order just one croissant, the pâtissier [pastry maker] will undoubtedly ask you, “With these?” rather than, “With this?”
So what’s the big idea? The French, you see, are [...]

LES RUES DE PARIS: PARTIE UNE – THE STREETS OF PARIS: PART ONE
“Paris Arrondissements”
“Paris Districts”
Paris, like New York City, is divided into large districts.  Though smaller and more numerous than New York’s boroughs, the arrondissements of Paris are large enough to comprise many neighborhoods.  There are twenty arrondissements of Paris, [...]

Ah, Valentine’s Day. Whether you’re a hopeless romantic or a hater of Hallmark for inventing the holiday, there’s no denying that it’s here (again), and it will be (again) next year on this date, and the year after that, it will make yet another appearance.