France Travel News 06/26/2011

Seagulls are annoying bird brained creatures – beach vagrants with a tendency to pilfer picnics and poop on heads. This seagull in Cannes, France goes one step further, making off with some electronics and filming his proud heist. The enterprising seagull thieves a GoPro video camera and absconds with it to his secret hideout.

A fellow expat reports: Now that I’ve lived in France for three years, I have some interesting observations about the HUGE differences between France and America. Most of these differences I would not have expected before coming, when I was seeing things as a tourist or outsider. I have actually been surprised by them.  I won’t address the obvious things like cuisine, medical systems, or the cafe culture, etc. Everyone knows those. I’ll write about the ones you may not be aware of as an outsider.

pdate (June 23, 10 a.m. PT): Due to the popularity of this deal the $999 deal is now sold out. This package is available for $1199 on these departure dates: Sept. 7, 14, 21. Still a great deal!

What food do you reach for before hopping on a plane? For many, it's hearty (burgers, pizza, pasta), snacky (chips, candy, chocolate) or healthy (sushi, salads, granola), but what about Frenchy? Don't walk through your next airport terminal so quickly, or else you may miss some of the most interesting airport cuisine out there. Yep—we're talking about French Brasseries.

From worldly after-hour suppers to late-night meals in all-night brasseries, France has a history of tardy dining. Now, a nomadic party-meets-breakfast event hopes to celebrate this tradition. “Why settle for a soggy crêpe on your way home when you can indulge in an epicurean breakfast spread with a glass of chilled Champagne in your hand?,” asked Jethro Turner, a co-founder of the Breakfast Club, a weekly food feast that offers cocktails and dancing, followed by a sunrise breakfast.

The French face is what hands are to the Italians. It stretches and twists to express a wide range of expressions and emotions with the same elasticity of a rubber band. From disbelief to discontent, it can convey a message just as clearly as any grouping of words. Here’s a look at some recurrent French faces, and how to interpret their meaning.

How do you say Twitter and Facebook in French? You don't say them at all. France has banned the names of both social networking sites from being spoken on radio or television, unless they are part of a news story. The reason for the ban goes back to a 1992 decree that says mentioning such services by name is an act of advertising. Therefore, using the terms "Twitter" and "Facebook" constitutes preferential treatment.

In Nice, Yves Klein “signed” the blue sky, calling it his first and biggest work, while Arman immortalized his neighbors’ trash under plexiglass. Down the road in Antibes, Hans Hartung splattered his canvases with spray guns and painted with olive branches; in the hills of Vence, Jean Dubuffet turned soil, stones and butterfly wings into paintings. These artists and many more are on display in “Contemporary Art and the Côte d’Azur” (artcontemporainetcotedazur.com), an ambitious summer show featuring more than 1,000 pieces from 200 painters and sculptors working on the Riviera from 1951 to 2011. The exhibition, beginning June 25, will sprawl across 50 museums, galleries and schools from Cannes to Menton and include such highlights as a first peek at the Bernar Venet foundation near St. Tropez (above) and an open-air sculpture show in Mougins’s new Eco’Parc.

Joseph Menard, a dairy farmer in Brittany, says the country's driest spring in half a century has left him with just two weeks of animal fodder in stock. "There hasn't been enough water for the grass to grow," Menard, who is also president of the agricultural office for Brittany's Ille-et-Vilaine region, said. "We get one or two hours of sporadic rain, but that's not enough to grow enough feed for both daily use and stock for the summer." Unseasonably high temperatures that resulted in the second-warmest April since 1900 and the driest spring in about 50 years have prompted France to restrict water use in some areas.

The 64th edition of the Cannes film festival officially opened on Wednesday with a black-tie screening of Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris" and a salute to Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci. "I declare the Cannes festival open," said Bertolucci in Italian and French, after French actress Melanie Laurent, the evening's master of ceremonies, invited him to do the honours.