Travel
Paradise is Where You Stand
Pico Iyer writing in The New York Times:
As a constant traveler for 49 years now, I sometimes feel I’ve been zigzagging from one “paradise” to the next. From Tahiti to Tibet, from the Seychelles to Antarctica, I’ve found tourist posters conspiring with travelers’ hopes to present every place as a kind of Eden. Yet often it’s our very notions of paradise that intensify divisions. In Sri Lanka I’d realized that the island has so often been taken to be Arcadia — Arabs saw it as “contiguous with the Garden of Eden,” and an Italian papal legate announced that the waters of paradise could be there — that the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British and millions of us tourists have all scrambled to grab a piece of it.
Besides, if I really did come upon a calm and self-contained Eden, what would it have to gain from me? I, like any visitor, could only be the serpent in the garden.
All our paradise, our only hopes, had to be uncovered here, in the midst of real life and in the face of death.
Remembering Maison des Crêpes in Washington
I visited Washington for the first time as part of a weekend trip organized by my high school’s French club. We ate at Maison des Crêpes. I enjoyed it. The restaurant is long gone but I remember it and my trip when I pass by its former location in Georgetown.
The Streets of Washington blog recently shared this photograph of the Maison des Crepes on Flickr and explained its history:
Maison des Crepes originally opened as La Crepe in 1967 at 1305 Wisconsin Avenue NW in Georgetown. It was the creation of Paris-born Jacques Vivien (1925-2010), who began his Washington career as the maitre d' at The Jockey Club. Vivien was riding a fashion craze for creperies when he opened Washington’s first. He decorated the restaurant in French provincial style and had his waitresses decked out in Breton costumes. Eventually two other locations would open, and all would remain popular, especially with tourists, despite sometimes poor reviews from local dining critics. The original restaurant in Georgetown closed in the early 1980s.
This brought back nice memories. That weekend trip was wonderful.
You can read more about the restaurant here.