Barry Frangipane's Blog

We were quite excited, my wife Debbie and I. Having lived here in northern Italy in a medieval town called Pieve di Teco for the past seven years, we were settled into the routine of retirement. Of course, that also comes with watching our budget, living on my pension and book royalties. But March 1st was the day her social security checks were scheduled to arrive, giving us greater freedom to travel and see more of Europe.

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It was a chilly winter day when the German police stopped Andreina, me, and two others while we walked in the direction of Mario’s office.

We were stopped because the fascists had issued a lockdown - no one was allowed out of their house. Heck, there were signs posted that we could be shot on sight if we walked with our hands in our pockets.

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Imagine being able to sleep among the finest Impressionist works of Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, and Van Gogh. All by yourself. In a train station. And then step outside on the balcony to watch the opening ceremony for the Paris 2024 Olympics.

When I first saw the abandoned train station, I was only 21, and it was 1979. As I explain in my new book Paris for Life, …I was walking along the Seine with my frien...

Immediately after the successful launch of The Venice Experiment in 2011, I teased my readers about an upcoming book on Paris. After settling in Northern Italy an hour from France, I made time to finish my Parisian project. As of March 30, 2024, Savory Adventures Publishing in collaboration with Ingram Content Group has announced the publication of Paris for Life: Notes from a Lifetime in and out of Paris.

My latest memoir chronicles my time ...

It was a sunny spring day in 1979 when the bomb exploded shortly after I walked by the restaurant. As I mentioned in my book Paris for Life, glass, metal, and stone flew in all directions on Rue du Médicis outside Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. A terrorist group quickly took credit for the bombing. Although there were over 30 people injured, fortunately no one was killed.

Paris and the Parisians are resilient. Over time, they always bounce back, neve...

The spire is back! After watching it collapse in flames during the fire of April 2019, the world thought that Notre Dame de Paris was gone forever. But thanks to the tireless work of nearly 1,000 skilled artisans and scientists, the cathedral is coming back to life.

Most visibly, an exact duplicate of the original spire erected in 1859 has been put in place. Although still encased in scaffolding, the new golden rooster perched atop stands proud, a...

Back in the late seventies through the nineties, traveling at night was quite popular in Europe. In 1996, my wife Debbie and I traveled in a private sleeper car from Paris to Venice, with the steward delivering our breakfast along with hot coffee and a newspaper in the morning. While we slept, we were transported from the City of Light to the City of Water. After brushing the last crumbs of our Parisian pastries off our faces, we stepped off the train and in...

Are you tired of taking endless selfies at the Eiffel Tower, Luxembourg Gardens, or the Arc de Triomphe? Looking for something more satisfying from your vacation?

This summer (2023), France’s premier cooking school Le Cordon Bleu Paris celebrated 140 years of supporting one of the world’s top French language schools, the Alliance Française. Their pastry chefs created an eight-foot edible Eiffel Tower, along with hundreds of pastries and chocolates. Since the 1800s, the t...

(Reprinted from June 2021, epilogue added)

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Last night I took the shortcut home, and it changed my life.

Carrying six heavy glass bottles of water, I walked through the alley behind our home. There I saw a thin elderly lady less than five feet tall, bending over pulling weeds from between the cobblestones. “I pull these weeds”, she explained, “so that this alley will be clean. No one else w...

Okay, so we’ve all seen millions of lists, most of which start with some catchy phrase like “10 things to do in Paris before you die”. Of course, you’re gonna want to do them before you die. After all, when life stops, your vision is likely to be severely impaired, not to mention your taste buds.

But there are certainly some things in Paris that can wait. Here are my top five:

The Catacombs - Denfert-Rochereau. Bones from over six million bodies have been c...