If we’ve learned anything from the French, it’s how to have an educational festival about anything.

In our neighborhood alone, we’ve seen a honey bee exhibition, a velo (bicycle) festival, countless book fairs, an Earth Day exhibition, a math expo (mathletes!), and a science expo — where kids were competing with the launch heights of their pressurized soda bottle rockets, shooting them way up in the air. Exciting stuff! We’ve even seen an Alsace Region fest packed with amazing foods, and “Helsinki à Saint Sulpice” celebrating Finnish design.

They’re all really interesting events with tents of displays and goods to buy and eat, but they just aren’t really topics you’d usually find with a dedicated educational expo in a major city in the States. These French fests seem too specific and happily nerdy to have much success there. So we felt like we’d really seen it all…

That is, until this weekend when we saw kids getting free balloons in the Jardin du Luxembourg…

As we got closer to the balloons, we saw a logo that said, “Fous de pommes de terre”… translation? “Crazy for potatoes.”

So that’s it. People learning all about potatoes smack dab in the middle of Paris. Now we’ve seen it all.

Up in the middle of the night in Paris to watch history being made in Denver.

I will always love Paris in August. The Parisians leave for pretty much the entire month and those who stay behind get to own the place… well, we own whatever is left open. But it’s still pretty great. So quiet. — In the 6th arrondissement, where we live, the streets become a beautifully empty movie backlot in which to stroll around.

And it lasts just long enough for you to start peering ahead toward la rentrée in September, awaiting the city to bustle again.

Related photography: http://rion.nu/v5/archive/001434.php

Also: Like a bear in a cave, but with sun and Welcome Back. (Slap) Day 230.

After moving away from New York City more than two years ago to live in Paris and enjoy the unique local details of what this city had to offer, I still didn’t feel too far away from the kinds of things we enjoyed in the States because we still considered ourselves citizens of the internet.

Even if my snailmail had changed, my access to most stateside Favorite Things could still be mixed in… downloaded tv shows, some online shopping, local-NYC blogs, etc.

Sure, we’d need a visiting friend or parent to pack a few extras (found cheaper stateside) for us when they visited, but we’d still have access — real access — to all of the modern conveniences via the Web.

Or so I thought.

Here’s just a few of the sites that don’t like the fact that I live overseas. continue…

Thursday’s afternoon storm was pretty crazy. Bright sun, very dark clouds, heavy rain, thunder, and lightning all at the same time. I love Paris in the summer!

Being a gadget junkie in France is hard. The prices here are outrageous, and that’s even omitting the VAT tax. The iPod Index is a light-hearted approach to figuring out how much your shiny new toy will cost, especially if you are visiting, or just moved from America. It’s similar to Economist’s Big Mac Index, but more useful because iPods aren’t generally subject to price fluctuations at the city-level.

Prices for a 160GB iPod Classic, according to each country’s Apple Store:

The numbers speak for themselves. Who would have though that you would have to hop the Eurostar up to London in order to find bargains on electronics? And why is France 20€ more than most other E.U. countries? By this math, I can buy a suitcase full of iPods whenever I go to the US, sell them on ebay for 300€ apiece and make a significant profit on each. But that would, ahem, be illegal.

With Mike wearing an almost-asleep Dante, I found myself ordering from Alloresto.fr for the first time…

Hey, will you go to Alloresto.fr so we can order? I’ll walk you through it.

Sure.

Okay, username and password… got it. Now, in the pulldown where it says, “Choisissez votre lieu de livraison:”… pick Domicile.

Got it.

Good. Now click the tab that says, “Chez Michael.”

Nothing’s happening.

Yeah, they need a loader or something to tell you it’s changing… There. Now click “Dernières commandes.” We’re getting the same thing as last week, yeah?

Yeah.

Okay, then click “Commander à l’identique”… and just a few more steps… and we’ll enter our Carte Bleue number… now hit the order button…. okay, good. — Now it’ll tell you there was an error.

Huh? What is that popup?

It’s an error. But don’t worry, the order went through.

Wha? It logged us out of the site.

Yeah, it does that. But I always get the confirmation email and the order comes. It’s just broken.

Wait. You mean to tell me that you’ve been ordering from Alloresto.fr every week or so for 5 or 6 months now, and every time, it give you an error message and logs you out of the site??

Yeah, but the food always comes.

Coming back from our vacation in Madeira, Portugal… the last leg of our journey: a two hour flight from Porto to Paris. (Re: the title: a French “crèche” is basically a preschool for toddlers.)

Most simultaneous babies crying on an airplane. Ever.

Also, TAP Portugal is evidently known for losing (and then hopefully, a few days later, returning) luggage. On TAP? Pack accordingly.